November 4, 2024: Monday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 15:15-20
Grace and Peace be with you, as it has always been throughout your life with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
I often come to you right away in this letter requesting prayers, and I will do that in a minute. Today give God a prayer of thanks for answering our prayers for Kandice in Hawaii. For a reason that her cancer doctors do not understand, her cancer number dropped to 750 from 1000. This is a significant improvement, and we need to continue our prayers for Kandice and Lisa and Alexis as they continue their journey and battle this terrible disease for their wife and sister. Please also continue praying for Teri H. as she awaits the third hip replacement on the same hip! It has been slipping out the socket, and there are pieces of the metal hip that are now shearing off and ending up in her system. Her surgery is on the 18th of this month. Also pray for Della J. She is not feeling well, and her 91st birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday Della!
This morning, we move into the next part of chapter 15 in the Gospel of Mark. Christ's trial before Pilate has taken place, the order for His crucifixion has been given, and soldiers have been ordered to prepare a cross. While that is happening, Jesus is in the hands of the Roman soldiers. One can only imagine the frustration of these soldiers, perhaps not for Jesus, but for the whole of Jewish people whose lives the Romans must oversee. That frustration reveals itself in the treatment of Jesus as a Jewish man, who just happens to also be the only begotten Son of God, the Savior. For the soldiers, this is just one more frustrating task to do, and in doing it, they are probably not familiar with the religious involvements of the Temple authorities. What they do know is that Jesus has already undergone the degradation of scourging before He even gets to them. That practice was a brutal beating and shredding of its victim's back with a heavy knotted rope until the flesh is torn and bleeding. But in these verses Jesus is now facing their ridicule, continuing whipping, and the abuse of His entire body. Roman soldiers were known around the near east as the bearers of brutality. All of this seemed to be a way of dealing with the "cult" which Jesus began. If we go beyond the crucifixion, then we come to all of the ways that the people who worshiped multiple gods, treated the Christians. Even in destroyed Pompeii, there are drawings on the wall of the destroyed city of Christians in positions of bowing to a donkey with the words under it "This man worships his god". Christians around the world are all too familiar with being treated in this way. When the Reformation of the 15 hundreds began, this new vision for praising God and discerning the God's Truth through His Holy Word in the Bible brought persecution and death by the Roman Church of the time, due to this new thinking being a threat to the orthodoxy of the Roman Church. Today within the Church again Confessing Christians are faced with persecution by the Christian Nationalists, who if they come to power in the government will work to destroy those of us who claim to Believe in God's Grace and Love for all of His children. The forward thinking of the churches of the Reformation will be seen with anger and a hostile environment. Once again, some 5 hundred years after the Reformation, we may now be faced with defending our leaders and seeking to keep one another safe from the hatred for the doctrines of the church we love. The question becomes will we run and hide like most of the disciples, or will we stand with the Love of Jesus Christ in the face of other "Christians", who would choose to condemn all that we have come to know as the LORD'S truth for this life, and for eternity? ( I use the word "Christians" here when the Spirit, and my heart, tell me those churches have lost their way, closed their hearts, and have found the Truth of God to be inadequate compared to the wealth and power they can gain if they ignore the Gospel of Jesus Christ.) I pray that religious freedom will continue in our nation. We have been set free by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When others may try to harm us, we still know that we are set free to serve the truth of the Gospel no matter what may be happening around us!
With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim
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