Mark 10:32 Commentary and Bible Study

This is the last journey of the Lord. It formerly begins (we read in the Gospel of John, chapter 11), at a city called Ephraim in the area of Ephraim. And then he went via Galilee and Perea and Jericho and Bethany. He is now beginning the journey up to Jerusalem where he will, in due time, be arrested, falsely tried, and where he will allow himself to be taken and crucified, to suffer and die for sinners, make an atonement – his atoning substitutionary death on Calvary's cross – and then rise from the dead. What we find in the last part of this chapter is some of the unexpected teachings of Christ, there is so much of great value to our souls. ‘And Jesus went before them and they were amazed’, ‘dumbfounded’ you could literally translate the Greek. They were speechless, is the sense. ‘Why is he going to Jerusalem? We know what will happen at Jerusalem. We know his enemies will take him. How is he going to set up his kingdom on earth if that happens?’ They expected an earthly Messiah. ‘He has raised no force. He has worked healing miracles, but he hasn't done anything to summon the people behind him. He is going to play right into their hands.’ They were dumbfounded. The disciples had been with him before on previous visits to Jerusalem. On the one immediately before this, some six months or more before, they were pleading with him saying ‘What are you going to Jerusalem again for? Before they sought to stone you.’ And so every time Christ went to Jerusalem there was mounting apprehension. The plots were running and the Pharisees had determined that he should be executed. ‘As they followed’ – and this actually doesn't refer to the twelve disciples now; it refers to all the other disciples who were also following – ‘they were afraid.’ There was quite a crowd of them – and they were afraid. Will they be affected? Will they all be rounded up? Will they all be beaten and arrested, if he is going to Jerusalem? ‘Can we continue to follow?’ That was the atmosphere on the road as they made their way at the beginning of the journey. He was leading the disciples. It implies that normally as they walked, as they travelled, he would not necessarily be in the front, but now he was, as though to express his determination for this last journey.‘And he took the twelve’, from all the other disciples, ‘and began to tell them what things should happen unto him.’ This is the third time it is recorded that he goes through these things, and warns them step-by-step. But each time he does it, he says a little bit more, and this is the fullest prediction of what will happen to him.