What do I know with Isaac Carroll
What do I know with Isaac Carroll
From Courtroom To Golgotha, This Story Shows Why Endurance And Grace Still Matter
A mob roars, a governor hesitates, and a King chooses to stay on the cross. We journey through Mark 15—from the morning trial to the sealed tomb—and wrestle with a hard truth: finishing well rarely looks like winning in the moment. Pilate’s questions, Barabbas’s release, and the soldiers’ mockery expose how envy and fear twist justice, but they also reveal the heart of Christ, who refuses to save himself so he can save us.
We unpack the layers of this scene: the silence of Jesus that unsettles power, the thorn-crowned parody that becomes a coronation of love, and the darkened sky that signals creation’s grief. At Golgotha, wine mixed with myrrh is refused, garments are divided, and a sign reads King of the Jews. When Jesus breathes his last, the temple curtain tears from top to bottom, opening access to God. A Roman centurion—an unlikely witness—sees how Jesus dies and declares, Truly this man was the Son of God. Meanwhile, the women remain, steadfast and watchful, and Joseph of Arimathea steps forward with quiet courage to honor the body and secure the tomb.
Beyond history, we face the personal call: what does finishing well look like for us? We talk candidly about endurance in marriage, work, and faith when escape feels easier, and we ask whether grace is truly enough when life strips away comfort. The cross doesn’t glamorize suffering; it reveals a love that holds in it. Because Jesus stayed, we can stay. Because the curtain tore, we can draw near. Join us for a study that challenges comfort, strengthens hope, and invites a deeper yes to faithfulness.
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May God bless you and lead you always.
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Isaac Carroll, and this is What Do I Know? Alright, in today's Bible study, we are going to be in Mark the fifteenth chapter, and we're going to begin at verse one. And as soon as it was morning the chief priest held a consultation with the elders and the scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and they led him away to deliver him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, You have said so. And the chief priest accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they are bringing against you? But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner from whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection there was a man called Barabbas. All right, Barabbas Abba means father, and Bar means son. This man's name was literally the Son of the Father. Now we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and we have Barabbas, the Son of the Father. The crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them, and he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews? For ye perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up. But the chief priest stirred up the crowd, to have him release for them Parabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with a man called the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, Why? What evil has this man done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having Jesus scourged, he delivered him over to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is the governor's headquarters, and they called together the whole battalion. All right, a whole battalion, in some translations it calls it a cohort, but this would be a round of four hundred and eighty men, four hundred and eighty Roman soldiers coming together to torment one individual. And they clothed him in purple cloak, they twisted together crowns of thorns, and they put it on him, and they began to salute him, Hail King of the Jews, and they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him, and kneeling down in homage to him. And after they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and he put his own clothes on him, and they led him away to crucify him. And they compelled a passer by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. They brought him to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull. They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. Alright, the wine mixed with myrrh was a concoction they used to give to people they were crucifying. It was kind of the dead of pain. But again Jesus refused. They crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him, all right, the third hour from sunrise, which if the sun rose at six it would be nine. If it was seven, obviously it would be ten. And the inscription on the charges against him read The King of the Jews, and with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left, and those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying he saved others, did not save himself. Let this Christ, the king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the sixth hour, it would be about noon. To the ninth hour it would be about three o'clock. So for three hours there was darkness. Can you imagine? And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lima, Sabakathani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled his sponge with sour wine, and put it on a reed, and they gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and he breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when Centurion, who stood there facing him, saw that in this way he had breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. There was also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger, and of Joseph and of Solomon. When he was in Galilee they followed him and they ministered to him. There were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come since it was a day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph Aramithia, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage, and he went to Pilate and he went to ask for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died, and summoning the centurion he asked him whether he was already dead. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, he wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock, and he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid. Alright, we have come to the end of chapter fifteen. I know this is Bible study, and normally we would go back over some things that were said and try to really flush out the meaning of things. It's been on my heart ever since I started trying to do this particular chapter, I have struggled with it. No way to do it justice. I keep seeing the passion of Christ as I read it. This past week, my pastor was preaching out of the book of Samuel, and he was talking about Saul. Saul was the king of Israel, the first king of Israel that God had established. And Saul started out well, but he ended badly. What does it look like to finish well? That was a question that he asked. Because he said, I want to finish well. I looked at myself and I thought about my life and my walk with the Lord. And I see all the ups and downs through the years of things that I have that I have struggled with, that I have uh that I've faced, and God has helped me overcome. We're reminded of all the good that God has done for us when we get in our lowest time. When we when we wonder, you know, is God really with us? Is he really directed us? Has he am I where I'm supposed to be because of God's plan, or am I where I'm supposed to, or am I where I am because my my pride of did I get myself here because I I believe something about myself that wasn't true. And we're reminded of the times that God moved in our life in such a way that there was no denying it. We know by the very fact that God is with us because he has proven it. So as I I think about Jesus. I think about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he he prayed to God if it if it was possible for this cup to pass from him. But not his will, but God's will. What does it mean to end well? To to finish well. Well, if you look at Jesus' life and you look at this chapter 15 of what Jesus went through of being crucified. Jesus was the epitome of of finishing well, but man, it doesn't look like anything we would want. We don't want to be crucified. We want we don't want to face that scourging, that humiliation, that mockery, that beating. I said this in our Sunday school class on Sunday. We say grace is enough, but is it really for us? Is it is it really enough? If you lost everything, if everything was allowed like Job to be taken from you. Maybe even your wife. And all you have left is sickness and pain and suffering. What's God's grace, his forgiveness of your sins? Would it be enough to keep you going? Would it be enough for you? Wouldn't you be satisfied with that? I I want my answer to be yes. But in my heart I know that I would ask why. Jesus on the cross, what he came to do. All those times that he had uh that he had preached and taught and laid hands on and fed, all those people who sought his help, who sought his words, who followed him. Some of those same people in the crowd calling for his death, his crucifixion, the the pain of betrayal, of and the thing about with Jesus is that the pain wasn't the fact that they were crucifying because he said, Father forgive them, it was the fact that they were so lost that they missed it. He was more worried about their soul. The reason why he was being crucified than he was about what was being done to him. He had to endure. To finish well, he had to endure. We get we get sidetracked over little things. Work becomes too tough, too exhausting. Think about ways we can make our life easier. Marriage. A relationship with our wife or a husband becomes too tough. We look at we look for reasons to to leave or or we're always looking for the grass to be greener somewhere else. Because we don't want to face hardship. And Jesus teaches us by his going to the cross that this life wasn't ever made to be easy. If you want to finish well, we have to deny ourselves. I'm gonna end this one here. We'll be in chapter 16 in our next Bible study. Until then, I love you guys. God bless ya. And goodbye.