Why Did Jesus Have To Suffer? | Erik Luchetta and Jeremy Marrone

What's up, man? How you doing? I'm doing great. You ready to jump into Mark 15? Yes, I am. All right. Tell us what is Mark 15 about? Yeah. This is um a very exciting chapter. This is where Jesus has been arrested. He's been tried uh found guilty, so to speak.

In chapter 14, the religious leaders said he's worthy of death, that he needs to be executed. And so now here in chapter 15, we see the pro the things that Jesus went through, um the beatings, the floggings, um the teasing and the mocking, the crown of thorns, everything that they could to degrade and and um basically call him worthless.

And so the question is this, why did he have to go through all of these things? Certainly, um, we know why he was crucified, why he died. He he died for our sins, right? Obviously, but what's with all the beating? What's with the floggings? What's with the mocking and the teasing and the crown of thorns?

Why did he have to go through all of this? In other words, why did he have to suffer? And the answer is this. In Jesus's sufferings, God was dealing with evil. And that's what the Jewish people were waiting for. When is God going to confront evil? Yes, they saw all the evil, all the sin in the world.

But the prophets said, "One day all of this evil will be removed from the planet. There will be a new heavens and a new earth. Sin and death will be gone. everything that corrupts and degrades and dehumanizes people will be removed. That's right. And that God would wage war.

He would do battle against evil and he would defeat evil. And again, the new heavens and new earth would come. So, one of the things that we see here in chapter 15 of Mark and we see in all of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is one of the reasons why Jesus went through so many things as he was going to the cross was because this is how God was confronting evil.

Because, you know, in the Old Testament all the way up into the Gospels, the Jewish people are wondering, when is God going to deal with evil? Yep. The world has been in a state of chaos and crisis. When is God going to be faithful to fulfill his promise to remove evil?

And not just when is God going to do it, but how is God going to do it? How is he going to confront evil? That's right. What we see in chapter 15 is that Jesus's sufferings is God confronting evil. So Jesus suffers. He experiences the full weight of all that evil can throw at you.

And he responds in love. Yeah. All of the the violence, the manipulation, the intimidation, the betrayal from Judas, one of his own friends. Yeah. He responds by not hating or casting curses on any of those people. He responds to evil in love. Yeah. And in his response of love, he defeats evil.

It's good. This is what we see here and throughout the rest of the New Testament. God defeated evil through Jesus's sufferings and in particular his response to the suffering by offering love and forgiveness. And guess what? When evil comes against us, we go that same path of love and forgiveness so that we can defeat the evil in our lives.

That's right. So, it's this is about going God's way using God's power of love and forgiveness to extinguish the power of evil. Jesus is doing that supremely. Yep. Here in Mark 15. So, yes, why did Jesus suffer? Well, he suffered for our sins, but he went through the brutality because the fullness of evil was unleashed on him and it gave him the opportunity to respond in love and thereby undermine the power of evil.

That's right. Which which is the the the idea of evil, the power of evil is what lures human beings in. Yeah. That's what the enemy used in the garden to lure Adam and Eve in to uh rebellion, defying God, trying to grasp for being human their own way, being walking in wisdom according to their own definition of wisdom, which we've talked about before.

Yeah. And so, yes, that the it wasn't just that Jesus um came to defeat the grave. True. And came to shed his blood for the remission of sins. True. But it also is to defeat evil. Yeah. and evil itself that whatever whatever it is the the darkness and the power of evil has the control over human beings to lure us into doing what God says not to what he forbids.

Yeah. And so Jesus wanted to break not only the curse of death, not only the curse of sin, but he wanted to break the curse of evil. Yeah. And it seems as if what the gospel writers are doing and the apostles later on in in the New Testament is saying that evil gets its power by fighting one another.

So if you do something wrong to me, I respond the same way. Vengeance. So So this is about this is about putting an end to vengeance and thereby defeating evil. So basically evil gets its strength by vengeance. And that's really what what we saw um in in in around Jesus's time.

There were a lot of would-be messiahs. A lot of people claimed to be the son of God, or at least put it this way, a lot of people believe that the kingdom of God was coming through them, but they were warriors. They were ready to kill their enemies.

Jesus says, "I'm going to come and die for my enemies." So, what do we see here in chapter 15? And we're going to look at the sufferings that Jesus went through. We see that the power of evil is fully at work upon Jesus, right? The the betrayal of Judas, the mocking, the beating, the flogging, the crown of thorns, the spit on the face, and then ultimately put on the cross and executed, murdered.

This is what it looks like when evil is at work. That's right. And Jesus responds with nothing except love and forgiveness. He doesn't curse his enemies at all. and evil doesn't know what to do with it because it can't now continue because he absorbs it within himself and doesn't pass it on.

He doesn't pass it back on to those who did it to him. That's right. And we, like I said a minute ago, we when we go that same route, we get that same victory. This is why love and forgiveness is so important. It's not just something it's self-sacrificial.

It's self-sacrificial love where not only does the other person benefit, but you benefit as well. This is how you win. Exactly. And and I think it's it's the idea of vengeance is the ultimate sign of self-indulgence. Yeah. Like it is the ultimate sign that no, you've wronged me and I'm going to wrong you.

I want you to feel the pain that I have felt. Yeah. And so the the choice for us to say I'm going to embrace giving evil for evil is the idea of that vengeance being the most self-satisfying thing we can do. Whereas Jesus is saying, "But self-sacrifice looks like not pursuing vengeance."

That's right. Not being the justifier of your life, allowing God to bring justice the way he can do it. Because here's the thing. As much as we think we can bring justice in our own lives, bringing vengeance against somebody will not make us feel better. No. We've heard it a million times in my life.

I've heard people say, "I thought I would be happy when I got even with somebody and it only made me more miserable." I've heard the same thing. Paul actually makes this argument in Romans 12. Romans, the first two verses of Romans 12, Paul says, "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

And then the very last sentences of that chapter, he says, "Do not repay evil with evil, but overcome evil with good." And that whole passage in there is about how does the world um get even and how are we as followers of Jesus, how are we supposed to be self-sacrificial and say the only way to overcome evil is with good.

And that's what Jesus is doing here. He all all the evil that is thrown against him here in chapter 15, he overcomes with good. So let's jump right in here. So here in chapter 15, um he's now standing before Pontius Pilate. He's the governor, uh who's overseeing that territory.

So they bring him before the governor, Pontius Pilate. Now Pilate really doesn't want to have anything to do with Jesus. He really doesn't care either way. He's trying to wash his hands from this thing. He doesn't want to get this. He looks at this as this is a Jewish issue amongst Jewish people.

Let them deal with it. So he's like, "H I don't I don't really want to touch this too much." But the crowd is roaring against Jesus. Crucify. Crucify. So finally Pilate says, "All right, we'll crucify him. We'll give him what you want." You know, we'll give you what you want.

So let's read though what happens because Mark as well as the other gospel writers are going to go into gory detail of what Jesus went through. And I want us to better understand why the detail. Why tell us all of this stuff? How's it supposed to impact our thinking when we're reading it?

How did Mark want it to impact our thinking? So Mark 15, I'm going to read verses 16- 20 and then 27 through32. Mark 15:16, the soldiers led Jesus away into the palace, that is the ptorium, and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.

And they began to call out to him, "Hail, King of the Jews." And again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling to their falling to their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put on his and put his own clothes on him.

Then they led him out to crucify him. They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads at him and saying, "So you who are going to destroy the temple and build it in 3 days.

Come down from the cross and save yourself." In the same way, the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. He saved others, they said, but he can't save himself. Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.

Those who crucifi those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. Listen to what's being said here in these few verses. Put on a purple robe, crown of thorns. They mocked him. They struck him in the head with a staff repeatedly. Yep. They spit on him. They mocked him again.

Then they hurled insults. They mocked him some more. Heaped more insults. What you see in here is every second Jesus is being confronted with evil. Yes, he's being presented with evil from every single person. Not just from the Jewish leaders, but from the Roman guards. Not just from the Jewish leaders and the Roman guards, but even the criminals who were hang hung next to him.

At least one of them is hurling insults at him as well. I mean, think about which is ironic. Yeah. Which is ironic. You're dying with him. Look at you. It's like you're kind of you're kind of in the same boat, man. But imagine this. Everywhere Jesus looks, evil is being heaped upon him.

Yeah. And again, why the why does he have to go through all of this? Why can't he just die on a cross? Right. And it's because what what Mark is saying here is saying, pay attention. This is what evil looks like when it's let loose. When evil is allowed to run its full course, here's what it looks like.

It involves mocking and beating and humiliation, violence, um, spitting on the face, and ultimately death. Yeah. This is what it looks like. One of the things I think Mark is doing here and all the other gospel writers because they all detail this. It's a warning. Hey guys, pay attention to this.

This is what evil looks like when it's let loose. Yeah. And the build the buildup. The the That's right. The buildup. The the buildup. Jesus became a magnet really to absorb evil to himself to destroy it. Yeah, that's the one of one of the one of the central reasons purposes of the cross was not just the shedding of blood for remission of sin, which is true.

Not just overcoming death and the grave, which is true, but absorbing evil onto himself to to destroy it in his body. Yeah. Yeah. But there's but there's a buildup, and I know we're going to talk about that, but there's a buildup to evil. It starts one way and ends with another.

It starts, but it's never satisfied. Evil is never satisfied until until it results in death. Yes. But so here's for here's where we're at right now. Mark is saying, do you see what Jesus is going through? This is more than just he went through this for me or for you.

That's true. He went through all of this stuff so that we wouldn't have to. But Mark is saying more than that. He's saying, "Look what happens when evil is let loose." Pay attention, Christians. For those of you who hate evil and love good, pay attention because this is what evil looks like.

Don't fall into this. And and this is what it looks like when the world is in power. This is the way the world get things done. Oh, you don't like the way Oh, you don't like my rules? No problem. We'll beat you and put you on a cross.

This is what it looks like when the world wants to exercise power and authority. But in Jesus's loving response to this, he's actually showing what true power is. It's good. Ultimately, true power is love and forgiveness. And he's demonstrating his authority by offering forgiveness as he's hanging on a cross.

So again, why did Jesus suffer so badly? Because he was confronting evil. He was doing battle with evil in his suffering. And he defeats evil in his response of love and kindness. In that response, he is defeating evil. Look at it like this. We know that fire, a flame survives on oxygen.

And the more oxygen you give a flame, the hotter and brighter and bigger the flame gets. Mhm. But if you deprive it of oxygen, you extinguish it. You put it out. And in a sense, what Jesus is doing through love is extinguishing the flame of evil by sucking all the oxygen out of it.

Yeah, it's good. So, he is snuffing out evil by going God's way. And in doing so, evil itself is crumbling underneath Jesus. It does not know what to do. It honestly, evil never saw any sort of love like this before. evil. Never saw this amount of love come out of somebody who was who was treated so poorly.

And if you think about it, Jesus has been tempted before to go the way of violence to pay back. Think about Jesus. He's in the Garden of Gethsemane, right? And the Roman guards come to arrest him. And Judas betrays him. And as they grab Jesus, Peter pulls out his sword and cuts one of the guards on the ear.

Right. One of the servants on his ear. Yeah. And Jesus says to Peter, "Put that sword away." He said, "Don't you know I could call on a legion of angels right now to defend myself? If I wanted to, I could annihilate everybody, but we're not going to go that route.

That will not defeat evil. Loving people, forgiving them in the extreme cases of pain and hurt is actually going to be the way we win." That's right. And and I think that I I remember I remember when I was in high school, I had a a guy I knew that came to my house after school one day and there was a guy across the street.

They didn't like each other. Well, they had words across the street. Oh, okay. And then 2 minutes later, they're in the middle of the street confronting one another face to face. And then it started they started yelling at each other. And then it was insults yelling at each other.

And then it was fist fight. Yeah. And we're trying to break it up. There's about three or four guys around them trying to break it up. But it went from one thing that one of them said to the other and then they were in the middle of the street fighting and then they were in the middle of the street or or verbally talking to one another this close to one another's face and then it was yelling and then it was violence.

Somebody threw hands um and and started throwing punches. And so it it always starts somewhere but it can never be satisfied. So what Jesus is is doing here and this is what I mentioned Romans 12. Romans 12 talks about that in your body with the members of your body literally it's talking about the physical body what we do in the physical body is either good or evil right so what Jesus is saying is that with the things that you think the things that you say and the things that you do with your hands is either good or evil and when we follow in Jesus' footsteps we're following in that spirit of love of mercy of grace of forgiveness of saying with the words of my mouth and the works my hands.

I am not going to go the way of evil. Yeah. And so Jesus came to to literally, like you said, strip evil of its very power, which is the oxygen to a flame to strip it of that very oxygen to where it has no power. It has no ability.

Yeah. And now through God's wisdom, we can make that decision every day to go, am I going to go the way of the world and say, I'm going to use my mouth and my hands for evil, or am I going to use it for good? Am I going to manipulate?

Am I going to lie? You know, my my kids, it started out with little eyes. Yeah. When they were little, and now the lies have gotten more grand. It never stops until we choose, like Jesus, to say, "I'm going to be self-sacrificial." One of the most self-sacrificial things we can do is tell the truth.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Jesus did that. Yeah. That's a very loving thing. Not the feeling of love, the action of love with his words and his and his and his hands. He literally let down his guard and said, "Do whatever you need to do." Yeah. To evil. Yeah.

Because he absorbed it and then destroyed it. And it's interesting how evil was trying so hard to get a reaction out of Jesus. A reaction of violence. Yes. And the thing is I pro it it provokes. Yeah. It provokes because it needs to it needs to get you to respond.

That's the way evil continues. You hurt me, I hurt you back. So you hurt me back. Or maybe we start hurting other people, right? That so evil has to be passed on and passed on and passed on. Well, what if you say, "I'm not going to participate in that.

Evil doesn't know what to do with you at that point because you decide you will not use me as an instrument to pass on hate and violence. you're not going to get me to gossip and degrade other people. I won't participate in that. Evil stops with you. Right?

And that's where you I that's why I think a lot of Jesus's temptations, particularly later on in the gospels when he's arrested and all of these things are going on, his greatest temptation, it seems that the devil's trying to get him to do is fight back. Come on, fight back.

Be like everybody else in human history, right? Fight back with vengeance. And he's saying, "I'm going to defeat evil by loving those who are doing this to me." That's right. And evil has no answer for that. But but in our culture, let's just let's have an honest conversation for a second.

In our culture, we're told if if you go that direction, you're getting walked on. You're letting people walk over you. Right? We've heard that. I've heard that before. Why are you letting them get away with this? Why are you letting them say whatever you uh they want to say to you without any sort of response?

Yeah. Why why are you letting them act like this toward you? You should put up a fight, right? You know, we that's a that's a common phrase. We look at that as strength. We look at that as like you should put up a fight. Yeah. So then I guess my question logically just goes to if you and I talk about this all the time.

We are to bring justice. Right. Right. And righteousness in the world. Then what's the difference between me longing for justice in a situation where somebody has wronged me and taking it to the to the stage of vengeance, right? What's the difference in those two things? Because you and I talk about justice a lot.

God setting things right, us being set the setting right people in the world. We've been set right, but God wants us to set things right. So where do we draw the line between what is justice and what is Yeah. Because revenge. Yeah. because you could look at it and say, "Oh, okay.

So, if somebody's hurting me, I can't do anything about it." I'll give you, for example, a while back, um, I was talking to somebody and she said to me, um, you know, Eric, I'm not I'm not sure what I should do because there's a guy at work, one of my co-workers, who's saying inappropriate things to me.

She was being harassed, right? Um, and they were things that I totally understood why she was not comfortable. And she was like, "Well, am I supposed to just love and forgive him and just let him keep doing it or should I go to my supervisor and let them know that this is going on?"

And I said without any hesitation, "Go to your supervisor. Go to your supervisor because you have a right to live in peace." But then I said this to her. I said, 'If you go to your supervisor, are you going to go to your supervisor because you hate this man and you want him to get in trouble because you want him to feel the pain that he's making you feel or are you simply going to your supervisor because this isn't right and you deserve to come into a peaceful environment at work?

And she said, "No, I don't I I would go talk to my supervisor and I I can do it without, you know, trying to get him in trouble. I just want this to stop. I said, then you have every right. You should absolutely go talk to your supervisor.

So to answer your question, the difference in a situation like that is trying to fix a situation or try and bring vengeance to the person who hurt you. Right? If it crosses over to the place of vengeance, you really have to pause. When you want somebody to feel the pain that they made you feel, you really have to pause yourself and say that's not how this is going to be fixed, but instead to simply say, I just want this situation to end.

I deserve to live in peace, so I'm going to talk to my supervisor. So, this actually is not so much about allowing people to just walk all over us, right? But what it's also not about is seeking vengeance and making people feel pain. And God God has established in societies in human civilization.

God has actually established ways to bring about justice. Instead of revenge where it's like I kind of think of like old western movies where it's like one guy wrongs another guy and he's like, "Hey, high noon tomorrow. We're we're you know, we're we're going to face off against each other with guns."

And it's like that is that's just that's just outlaw justice. That's just revenge. You know, somebody wronged me, so it's like let's go, let's fight. God has actually put in place in human civilization ways for us to come to a just end uh things like the court system all the way back to Noah.

In Noah's day, God said, "Establish courts." And and this is something that's interesting. If you look at Romans 12, which I keep quoting, but it's a really important chapter on overcoming evil with good. The very next chapter, Romans 13 1-6, it says God puts government, civil government, that's local, state, national, world.

That is government in place to actually restrain evil. Yeah. That's the job. Yeah. And it is a servant. The Bible says in Romans 13:1-6, it is a servant unto God to restrain evil. And so I like you just said, I I think in a in a practical sense, the institutions that we have in our civilizations should be should be working toward justice instead of me having to take personal revenge against somebody.

They should be working for the common good. And so I I think it's one of those things that this is one of those areas for me in my life. I'll be honest, I've had to really learn to trust God in areas like this. This takes faith. This takes a lot of faith for us to be able to say, "I'm not going to seek vengeance.

I'm going to allow God's way of getting to justice." Like, there's two on-ramps. I can go the on-ramp of vengeance, and I I deal with this myself, or I can go the on-ramp of God's justice and allow his um modes of justice to play out in civilization. Because when God does it himself through his chosen systems, I guarantee you a lot more people will see it than if we try to bring revenge ourselves.

And it's really about humanity and civilization and God's created order as a whole. That's why God wants the the mechanisms he's put in place for justice to work themselves out because it's for the greater good of the whole to see it than for me just to go get vengeance and revenge in some back room by myself.

Yeah. The hard part is is placing that justice in somebody else's hands. Yeah. Can we be honest? Yeah. Oh, yeah. To trust somebody else to work on our behalf to bring about justice. But it that's that's that is what it means to follow God. That's what it means to follow Jesus.

I have to place my the what I've been wronged in. I have to place it being made right by Jesus. And I have to say, I I'm going to put it in your hands. You know what to do with this. And pastor says it. Pastor Joel says it all the time.

God knows how to make things right a lot better than we do and to do it fairly. Yeah. And justly.ly. Yeah. And that's the difference between justice and vengeance. Yes. We choose justice, not vengeance. And ultimately, that's what Jesus is doing. He's in a he's in a sense bringing justice by not choosing vengeance, right?

He doesn't curse or uh fight back or destroy his enemies or anything like that. He's not bringing out the two guns like you said in the in the westerns. And for in in situations like that, it's almost like I'll show you I'm the greater one. I have more power.

I'll make you feel even worse than you made me feel. And they and there's a sense of like see that I'll show you that I'm greater. I'm stronger than you. Absolutely. And and even within that you have Jesus in this same book earlier on in Mark in Mark uh chapter 9 where they're talking of this issue of greater and who's greater and what greatness is all about.

And here's what he says. I'll share this in Mark 9:35. It says sitting down Jesus called the 12 and said anyone who wants to be first must be the very last and the servant of all. And here Jesus is defining greatness in terms of service. What we see time and time again in the Bible is that the world says, "I'll show you what power is."

That's right. That's what Pilate is doing here and the Jewish leaders. Jesus, we'll show you what power is. We'll kill you. we can crucify you. And what Jesus is showing is that real power is not the ability to take life. Real power is the ability to give life.

That's good. Real power is not the ability to destroy a life. It is to restore a life. And that's what Jesus is even doing here in his sufferings is he's opening up the ways for life to be restored, for humanity to be restored by not fighting back. By being a servant of all, by being the least of all, he's being the greatest of all.

And that's what it all always comes down to is this idea of being great in love and forgiveness. In kindness, we show our greatness. In kindness, we actually show we're in charge. Yeah. Think of it this way. Let's pretend we hop in a time machine. You and I or maybe a bunch of other people, we go back 2,000 years and we're witnessing what Jesus is going through.

We see him standing before Pilate and before the crowds. He's beaten and bloodied. He's got a crown of thorns. He has spit dripping off of his nose. He's clearly been beaten to where his face is swollen. He's been lashed. He's been flogged and his body is tore from head to toe.

He has a purple robe and everybody's laughing and mocking at him. And Pilate is standing next to him in his robe in his palace with all of his armed guards. The question is this. If we went back in time and we were standing there and we saw that moment, would we really say Jesus is the one in charge in that moment?

Or would we say Pilate? In the natural, we would say, well, Pilate's clearly in charge here. He just he just did all this violence on Jesus and he's going to execute him. Clearly, Pilate's in charge. The Christian faith says, actually, no. In that moment of suffering and abuse and beating, Jesus is in charge because he's not fighting back.

Yes. In that one moment, he is overcoming evil. Evil is crumbling at its feet. Evil doesn't know what to do because Jesus refuses to participate in vengeance. Yes. And he offers nothing but love and forgiveness as he hangs on the cross and gives his life. Our job as Christians is to not it it's more than just simply saying Jesus went this way.

I'm going to go this way. As true as that is, it's about having a revelation. This is what evil looks like. Stay away from it. Yeah. I'm not on team evil. I'm not on team evil. I'm not going to go in that direction. And so when we see Jesus, like you said before, he's betrayed by Judas. starts with words and it moves on to Judas saying, "Let's make a deal."

Okay. Um, I'll take you to where Jesus is. And the one I kiss, he's the one you want to arrest. Oh, so now they hatched the plan. And then the plan, the evil plan turns into mocking. It turns into abuse. Then it turns in, if it doesn't stop, it'll turn into violence.

Yeah. It'll turn into fists and flogging and being beaten with a rod. And if that's not enough, evil will then turn into murder. Murder. Yeah. Murder is the ultimate expression of evil. The murder of innocence is ultimately where evil wants to go. So to answer this question, when will evil be satisfied?

Only when it reaches murder. Yep. Then it will it will run its full course. What Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are doing is saying, "My beloved brothers and sisters, as you read this, look at how evil operates. It's a path that starts with words, goes to mocking, goes to physical violence, and ends in murder.

Keep your foot off of the path of evil." Yeah. Oh yeah, we know. Yeah, we know that coworker over there. Oh, she does a terrible job, doesn't she? I'm surprised she can I'm surprised she lasted this long. Oh, she just And you see the way she dresses. Oh, she looks terrible.

I can't believe she even decides to wear that. All the mocking and the teasing. That's when we as Christians need to walk away from anything. Our words should always be about love and about building people up and about forgiveness. That is the way we defeat evil. You know, I think I think about this.

I want to share this story. I think because this is a powerful story that impacted me personally. Um, one of my friends who's a pastor, um, his name is John. And several years ago, he went through an unwanted divorce. Basically, his wife left him and moved on, went with another man.

She cheated and and uh, and the marriage ended. And I remember, you know, being with him during that time and just the way he was committed to forgiving her, walking in love. He maintained a relationship with her. He was always cordial with her, always kind, and he was committed to not holding hatred against her.

And I saw it happening. He really did forgive her. But I'll never forget how one day she gave him a call and she said, "Uh, hey, John. Uh, can you do a favor for me?" And he said, "Sure." He said, "Well, I know this guy and he's really going through a difficult time and I'm actually wondering if you would pray for him."

And so John said, "Yeah, I'll pray for him." Who is it? It's the man that she cheated on with and the man who ultimately worked to destroy John's marriage. Yeah. She wanted him to pray for the man that she left John for. And you know what John did?

Prayed for him without hesitation. He met he had coffee with the man. He grabbed his hand and he prayed for him. That is the ultimate sign of forgiveness. That after the hurt somebody calls you, caused you, you want more than anything else to see their best days ahead of them.

And the thing that they prayed for, the thing that John prayed for with that man, God did for that man. Right? So my point is this. When John did that, when he prayed, he defeated evil. Evil does not know what to do with somebody like that. somebody who refuses to participate in unforgiveness and hatred.

And I think today, you know, here's John today. He's a pastor today, right? He is walking in the very calling that God had for him. And I believe and I believe that the main reason he is, at least one of the main reasons he's living in his calling right now is because he refused to hold hatred and unforgiveness towards his wife and towards the man who destroyed his marriage.

I think that is a powerful lesson. Evil can't stop you. Yes. If you refuse to go into if you refuse hatred and unforgiveness. That's good. And and and evil's desire is to provoke us to respond. Yeah. It is to voke to provoke us to um to respond in a way or react.

Let me say it like that. Yeah. Responding is good. Reacting is not right. to react in a way where um if if you provoke me and I physically dominate you to prove that I have more power, I actually have less power cuz you just prove that you can manipulate me into responding.

Right. Right. That's the whole point. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus refusal to react, John's refusal to react in the same kind of way back to her or that man is saying, "I refuse." Yep. I refuse. Nobody can make us emotionally respond. We choose Yeah. to respond. Yeah. We choose. Yeah.

Well, they made me do it. No, they didn't. Yeah. My daughters when they were 2 and 3 years old, we have this hilarious video that that Tara was at home with my girls. She was filming them and Foster had made her older sister Finley angry. and Foster said something or did something and Finley went over and pouted in the corner like this and her mother said, "What's wrong with you?

What's going on?" And she said, "She made me angry again." A hilarious video, by the way. We may post it on social media here soon, but a hilarious video. But it just it just goes to show we've we've taught our girls since they were little. She can't make you do anything.

You choose at some point to react. You choose to give back to her what she was giving to you. Well, she made me angry again. Our choice. Now, human emotion is one thing. Human emotion is normal. That is, you know, I I can feel anger. I can feel frustration.

I can feel hurt. I can feel disappointment and absorb it and go, I'm not going to I'm not going to respond. And so, I I I always think of that moment with my girls in that video. And I think of the same thing with John. Yeah. How are we going to respond?

How will we react in the moment? And this is the hope and trust that we have in God. Hope really the Greek word for hope is confidence. Do we have confidence in God or not to actually justify us in any situation? That's the question. This is actually one of my arguments for God.

People I have had friends over the years who have been atheists don't believe in God and they go, "Why do you believe in God?" I believe because human beings crave justice. We crave it in our innermost being. People cry out. The nations cry out for justice. The people, human beings cry out for justice.

So, here's the thing. If we don't get justice in this life, because some people, some people feel like they haven't gotten justice. Well, what about all the the children in different parts of the world that go starving and and die? They they physically die. Where's the justice in that?

So my my argument is I believe that there is a God simply because whether in this life or in the age to come. God is the justifier of all human beings and he will make wrong things right. So that's my that's one of my central arguments for the very existence of God because this is who God is.

And if we're created in the image of God to have that same sense of God has given us a a um a moral core inside of us to say justice is real. It's a real spiritual thing and God desires it for us. And you said it earlier, murder, murder is the greatest assault on the image of God on a human being we could ever do.

And that's what evil wants. And that's what evil wants is the utter assault on the image of God in in the in a fellow human being. That's his goal. And so our refusal, my refusal not even to be provoked is what can kill evil. Yeah. It kills that flow of evil coming out of that person or that situation.

Because more than anything, I remember growing up with my brother, we used to argue and fight all the time, wrestle, and he would provoke me. He was bigger than me. He would hold me down and just tap my face. He would just provoke me to anger. And so, this is the utter defeat of evil for us as human beings.

We can actually walk out in real time. It's a It's really a practice. And I think that's what Matthew's trying to say here. He's saying, "Hey, everyone, look what evil does when it's let loose." Yes. It looks like betrayal. It looks like mocking. It looks like violence. If it's allowed to go far enough, it looks like murder.

This is where it wants to go. Keep your foot off the path of evil. Don't even allow your words to get a foot for evil to get a foothold on you. And when you need to forgive, here's how I would close. When you need to forgive, and we all need to forgive us.

Not only do we need to be forgiven, we need to forgive other people. Yes. Do it with a revelation of this that forgiveness will actually give you the victory. Yes. Forgiveness is an opportunity for you to win the same way Jesus won. It's counterintuitive though in our culture cuz we're saturated with vengeance.

But that's why having that big why is so important. True. This is why it works. So again, chapter 15, Jesus does battle with evil by responding in love to to suffering and then teaches us to go and do likewise to have the faith that the same victory he had, we will have and therefore keep your foot off the path of evil.

It's not going to lead to anything good. That's good. I love it. Thank you. This was a great explanation of of Mark. Awesome.