After Jesus had been scourged with whips, He was brought back inside Pilate’s headquarters and a battalion of about 200 soldiers was brought together for the spectacle. At this point, His body was beaten and bloody. I’m guessing His face was bruised, swollen, and looking less and less recognizable. And as if the physical torment He had been forced to endure wasn’t enough, Jesus was mocked by the Roman soldiers who seemed to enjoy the task of fulfilling His execution.

There are several ways the soldiers decided to mock Jesus. For starters, they took a purple cloak (because the color purple represented royalty) and put it on Him. Then they fashioned a crown out of thorns and pressed it into His skull. In Matthew’s gospel (Mt. 27:29), we’re also told they put a reed in His right hand to complete their attempts to mock His royalty. Jesus put up with it all, even allowing Himself to endure their mocking salute of “Hail, King of the Jews!”

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It isn’t really pleasant to think about what Jesus willingly endured for us in the moments prior to His crucifixion, but it does foster a genuine sense of gratitude, appreciation, and admiration for Him within me. We deserved this punishment, but He endured it. We deserved the accusations, but He took them. We deserved the rejection, yet He put up with it so we could be welcomed into His everlasting kingdom as children of God who are made holy and blameless in His sight.

Jesus was accused, arrested, and scourged to set us free. He experienced sorrow to bring us joy. He experienced and defeated death to grant us life. He is worthy of our trust and thanksgiving.

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There is a time to remain silent and a time to speak up. Let me encourage you to seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit as to when it’s time for each response. And when you’re given opportunity to testify to who Jesus is, don’t hesitate to honor Him with your words and your testimony. Even if you’re treated in a similar manner to the treatment He endured, honor Him with your lips, your lifestyle, and the lasting impression you leave upon those you interact with in this world.

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Visit: https://whitneyscookies.co/

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Please visit https://www.biblestudyheadquarters.com/ for more tools and resources to help you grow in faith.

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If you enjoy the show and want to buy John a coffee, please click here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/johnstange

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Following the Passover meal, Jesus took His disciples to Gethsemane where there was a garden. Already, this had been an eventful night for the group. They had been told that there was a betrayer among them. They were also told that they were about to scatter and leave Jesus. Jesus had also repeatedly made it clear to these men that the time was coming when He was going to be arrested and killed before rising from death. This was a lot of information to process, and I imagine that the heightened emotional state of the disciples, the walking they had just done, and the lateness of the hour contributed to them feeling very tired.

Jesus knew the hour had come for Him to be betrayed, arrested, tortured, and crucified. The long-promised atonement for the sin of humanity was about to be completed by Him at the cross, but His soul was filled with sorrow at the horrifying thought of what He was about to experience.

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Making unhealthy comparisons between your life and the life of others is a common mistake we as people seem to often make, and those comparisons can lead you to end up in one of two different places depending on the nature of your comparison. You will either end up in a state of pride or a state of despair when you compare yourself to others.

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It's one of my primary life priorities to encourage others to trust in Christ and follow Him. Every Sunday, I stand up in front of our church family and try to persuade people to give their lives to Christ. I write books about this. I record podcasts about this. I post on social media with regularity with this as the chief aim of my posts. Many of you do the very same things and even more. But how persuasive can a messenger of God be if they don't personally fear the Lord? What about their life would persuade another person to consider following Christ if that's not the dominant pattern of the messenger?

Paul wanted the Corinthians and all people to know Christ deeply, but he also knew that Christ's ambassadors need to carry themselves in this world in such a way that the fear of the Lord is a dominant motivation behind their perspectives and actions.

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Jesus is both a leader and a friend to those who trust in Him, but would we have been willing to trust Him at all if we didn’t believe what He said? If we weren’t absolutely convinced that He will do what He said He will do, would we be willing to entrust our hope and eternal aspirations to His care and protection? Jesus can be trusted, and in Mark 14:12-25, He demonstrated that His words are true and that He has done or will do everything He said He would.

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If you enjoy the show and want to buy John a coffee, please click here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/johnstange

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