Gratifying a Crowd…

Read: Mark 15-16
Marked: Mark 15:15, So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged [Him,] to be crucified.

Pilate wanted to gratify, to satisfy, the crowd. He released a guilty man and held an innocent man guilty.

Wanting to satisfy people can lead us to do the opposite of what we should do. The very thing the crowd needed was kept from them at their insistence because their hearts betrayed them and Pilate gave into them.

And no one was satisfied, with the exception, perhaps, of the murderer Barabbas. We can’t do evils and expect good to result.

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The Garden…

Read: Mark 14
Marked: Mark 14:32, Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

Gethsemane means, “oil press”, a place for crushing olives to extract the oil. Aptly named, for there in the garden the Lord was crushed by the weight of what was about to befall Him.

There, His companions fell asleep while He prayed through His agony. There, in the garden, great drops of sweat became drops of blood falling from His brow as He beseeched His Father to remove the cup He was about to drink.

There, in the garden, one of His own led men in betrayal to arrest Him and placed a kiss on His head to identify Him. There, in the garden, He was abandoned and left alone.

There, in the garden, He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him. There, in the garden, He was oppressed and led as a lamb to the slaughter.

Yet, it was God’s will to crush Him. There, in the garden.