MARY MAGDALENE A FAITHFUL DISCIPLE
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE: LUKE 8:1-3 JOHN 20:10-18 MARK 15:40
Lesson 11 February 13, 2021
Key verse
“Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses; Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out”.
Luke 8:1-2
INTRODUCTION AND STUDY
A disciple is someone who follows Jesus and is dedicated to Him. The disciple looks to Jesus as the greatest Teacher who knows the truth. The intention of the disciple whether man, woman, or child, is to imitate the life and teaching of Jesus.
Disciples of Jesus know that Solomon in Proverbs 8 speaking under the inspiration of God said:
“I love them that love me: and those that seek me early shall find me”.
God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son wants people to become their disciples, learning from them and coming to understand that Jesus and His Father are the only ones that know the way that people have to follow to obtain eternal life.
Jesus when He was on earth traveled all over the nation of Israel teaching and preaching and telling people about the Kingdom of God and showing them how they could enter into the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus was traveling all over His country He had male and female disciples that traveled with Him. They wanted to learn everything that they could learn from Jesus. Some of the disciples which included many women had been healed by Jesus of many sicknesses and all kinds of diseases. Some of them had serious mental problems and Jesus healed them too. Jesus cast out demons, horrible beings that Satan had implanted in some of the people. They suffer tremendously and eventually some of these people met Jesus and Jesus healed them too.
One of these disciples who had been healed from a severe demonic attack by Satan’s demons , we are told that she had seven demons inside her, was named Mary Magdalene.
She was not a poor woman but her money could not help her get better. So when she met Jesus and Jesus healed her by throwing out the seven demons inside her she joined a group of other women that went about with Jesus. They took some of their money and helped to support Jesus and the rest of the other disciples. They were very grateful for what Jesus had done for them.
These women were very faithful and a supported Jesus in His ministry. They were devoted to Him and spent a lot of time learning from Him.
But one sad day the rulers in Israel crucified Jesus and He died on the Cross. One of His disciples who was very rich buried Jesus in a special tomb that he had built for himself.
The disciples were very sad. But the faithful women who were disciples went and saw where Jesus was buried and they took spices to embalm Jesus’ body. But when they came at first they found that the tomb had been shut tight with a large stone covering the entrance and they could not get in to do anything to Jesus’ body. So it seems that most of them left.
But this disciple Mary Magdalene was so faithful that she did not want to stay away from where Jesus was buried and she came back to the tomb weeping and crying. This time she saw that the entrance to the tomb was open and she saw two men sitting where the body of Jesus had been placed with the grave clothes neatly folded up.
These men were really Angels but Mary’s eyes were so full of tears and she was so depressed that she did not know that. The men asked her why she was weeping and she told them that someone had taken away the body of Jesus and she didn’t know who it was that did that and where the body was. She wanted to find Jesus’ body so that she could give Him a good burial. She was not afraid that these men would be against her admitting that she was one of Jesus’ disciples. Some of the people in the nation of Israel did not like Jesus because He had been doing a lot of good for the poor people. She did not know or care whether these men were friends or enemies of Jesus. She was brave and loved Jesus so much and was so grateful for what Jesus had done for her that she was not afraid.
Then suddenly as she spoke to the men she seemed to hear somebody behind her and she turned around and she saw someone she thought was the gardener who was looking after this property owned by this rich disciple. Mary was still crying and told the man that someone had taken away her Lord and she wanted to find out where His body was.
The man she saw was really the resurrected Jesus but Mary did not know that. But Jesus felt a great deal of compassion for Mary and Jesus wanted to comfort her so He simply said her name “Miriam”, the name that Jesus and all her friends used when speaking to her.
Mary Magdalene knew the sound of that voice, and she immediately turned, and said Teacher, knelt down and grabbed Jesus’ feet.
She was now so happy. Her tears were all gone.
But Jesus had a Task for her to do. He told her that she should stop clinging to Him because He had to go back to His Father in Heaven. The reason Jesus said that was because Jesus’ disciples did not want to remember that Jesus told them that He would die on the Cross and after that He would be resurrected and would ascend back to heaven. They wanted Jesus to stay with them all the time and rule all over the Earth. They wanted Jesus to set up His Kingdom right away.
But Jesus knew that was not the way to do it. He wanted His disciples to know that that was not the time to set up the Kingdom on earth. Jesus wanted to represent all those millions of people that would eventually believe in Him as their Saviour and get the Father to agree with Him to look after them and forgive their sins. Most of those people had not been born yet so Jesus wanted His disciples to know that they would have to wait until all of those people were born and came to believe in Him as their Saviour before He would came back to earth and set up the Kingdom.
Mary realized that she had a big task. Jesus told her that she and she alone had the great and most important task to go and tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that He would have to go to meet His Father in Heaven. He had a very important job to do in Heaven which involved looking after those that believed on Him and who are living on the Earth. We call that Jesus’ ministry of interceding for us.
When the disciples heard this great message from Mary their Pain, suffering, frustration, disbelief, and crying would stop. Mary’s message was a beautiful message from Jesus.
Mary Magdalene therefore is regarded as one of the most important messengers of the Lord Jesus Christ. She was a great disciple. She was great because she had a passionate love and faithfulness for Jesus. She had been very grateful for what Jesus had done for her and so she could not bear to be away from Him.
Jesus loved all His disciples whether they were men or women. We should remember that men and women and children, boys and girls, are important to Jesus Christ. No believer in Jesus is inferior to the others.
We have to learn to treat each other properly because we all belong to Jesus Christ and we are in the same body with Him.
Sometimes we tend to forget that and treat each other badly and look down on others thinking that some are not as important as others . That of course is wrong and Jesus chose Mary Magdalene to bring the great message that He was resurrected to the other disciples to show us that He did not have any prejudices at all. All of us believers in Christ might have different jobs to do but all of us are equal in Christ. All of us have been given great gifts so that we can work to build up the body of Christ which we called the church.
So are you as faithful to Jesus as Mary? Do you love him like how she loved Him?
Make sure that you make a resolution to be faithful to Jesus, to obey Him, and to do everything you can to help others to come to know Jesus and be saved. We now have to work to give everybody a chance to become Christians and experience the love of God the Father.
So let us look carefully at the life of this beautiful woman called Mary Magdalene who dedicated her life to serve Jesus and who with all her heart, her soul, her mind, and the money that she had used it for the benefit of Jesus and the other disciples. We should do the same. We have to bring all the people that we meet to come to know Jesus Christ because the Holy Spirit would guide us to do that.