October 29, 2024: Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 15:6-15
Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers! May the Spirit's presence and strength in your life create in you abounding faith.
Good Tuesday morning my dear friends. I believe that autumn has finally arrived in the desert. I hope this day finds your life renewed with energy and joy in the cool weather with which we are blessed today. Please pray for a family in our congregation who finds themselves in the time in which a teenager's angst and finding out who they are, is a difficult time in the family's life right now. Pray for guidance, peace, the understanding of self, and the comfort of Christ in their home today. May God richly bless them. Of course, please continue praying for Kandice, Lisa, and Alexis as they continue their lives in Hawaii. Pray for them as well, that God will bring them comfort, peace, and if it is His will, His miracle of healing.
We all need to understand and know that God's living and loving presence always surrounds us through the joys and the sorrows of every day. I can only imagine how important that was to Jesus as He is tried and as He stands for possible release as Pilate does his annual release of a prisoner at the request of the people of Jerusalem. It all sounds like this is the chance that the Son of God, our Savior, may not have to go to His death. But the direction of God's plan for our saving must proceed, and to that end, who would appear as the group of people who will make this annual demand of Pilate but the friends of Barabbas. This helps us to understand why there is such a difference between the people who welcomed Jesus, riding on the foal, a donkey, which would infer that Jesus was the conquering one to come to set them all free from the Roman's occupation of their land. These people were the everyday people of the pilgrims who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. So, who was it that might demand such a different outcome for the Savior? It was not the people who cheered his e. y into the city of the Temple. No, it was another group who was in place at the hearing before Pilate. The common folks would not choose to knowingly be in the same crowd as them. They were the "Sicaril" or dagger-bearers, a group of exceedingly dangerous thieves and murderers who came to claim the freedom of their fellow criminal, Barabbas. So, what about this group of people? This part of the Jewish community chooses lawlessness instead of laws without any consideration for the well-being of the innocent. Interestingly enough, the word for sin is "anomia" or lawlessness, a willingness to kick out of the way societal standards and, to smash them down, and to put in their place the lawless desires of the heart, or any discipline that would restrict them in any way. Today we often see people in our communities and nation who set themselves and their lives with anomia, and sometimes we are them too! They also chose war instead of peace. They chose the man of blood and crime instead of the Prince of Peace and Harmony. War seems to be a constant presence in the world in which we live. The longest time in recorded history during which there was no war has been a tiny 130 years. We all know this too well, don't we? Today we have the war in the Ukraine against the aggression of Russia, and the horror of 40,000 plus Palestinians, in the Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iraq, and at the same time the murder of more than a 1000 Jews which fired this mess off. Now the war in the East seems to be growing, and it is a dangerous reality for the entire world. The community of which Barabbas was a part also chose hatred and violence instead of love. All of this is around our Lord as he moves to allow Himself to be sacrificed exactly because of this sin in the world, so that we might have hope and certainty in our lives that we now have a means of grace, Jesus Christ, who is our mediator with the LORD of hosts.
I pray that you will know the power of Christ's love for you today.
In His love, Pastor Kim
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