
This episode centers on Mark 15 and a theological reflection on the crowd’s cry to crucify Jesus. J.D. argues that the real danger of a crowd is shared power without personal responsibility, and uses Barabbas and Pilate to show how injustice can be diffused into everyone and therefore no one. The message then turns personal: salvation by grace through faith begins when a person steps out of the crowd and owns the guilt as if it were fully their own, only to receive the astonishing truth that Christ has already borne that blame. The second half moves into worship and encouragement. J.D. and David Walt sing “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus,” reinforcing the theme that cleansing, pardon, and righteousness come only through Christ. The episode closes with a journal prompt about whether accepting total responsibility for Jesus’s death feels like injustice, followed by a preview of the next week’s Bible study on James with guest teacher Luann Riley and an invitation to continue waking up ...
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Sower nation. It is Thursday, July 30, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2026. Yes, it is his year. Isn't that amazing? Our entire system of time is numbered around Jesus. Phenomenal. His resurrection from the dead. Wow. And here we are, all these years later, still meeting with him. He's. He's waited on our generation, and here we are. And we got an opportunity to walk with him. Like. Like this is not a historical figure. Yeah, he made history. But let me tell you something. He is the future, and even more so the history and the future. He's the present. He's the right here, right now. He's the eternal now. Today. Today. He keeps saying, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So let's just. Let's just dive in this morning. He's. He's here. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen. So today's entry is entitled why it's all your fault. In our text, we're in Mark, chapter 15. We're going to wrap it tomorrow with chapter 16. And then we're going on to Lou Ann Riley the next week. Lots. Lots ahead, folks. Lots of Good ahead. Chapter 15. I want you to read that whole chapter today. I'm going to read verses 6 through 15. Hear now the word of the Lord. Now at the feast, he used to release for them. This is Pontius Pilate. He used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And 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 he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, why, what evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. And Pilate again said to them, then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. Crowds are insanely dangerous entities. In a crowd, no particular person holds power. Yet together they hold a collective form of power bordering on absolute. Because no individual person holds power, no individual can be held responsible. This explains the danger of a crowd, extraordinary power without personal responsibility. Isn't this what killed Jesus? Sure, we can blame the religious leaders, and we can blame Pilate. We can even blame Judas. What good will it do, though, to blame the crowd? This is precisely the way we escape personal responsibility. We delegate our guilt to the crowd where it can never be absolved because it will never be felt. The crowd never pleads guilty. This is how the gravest of injustices happen. In fact, this is how the greatest injustice in history went down. The gospel of Jesus Christ is how the gravestone injustice in the history of the world became the most gracious invitation for all eternity to come. The miracle of redemption happened because the blameless one took our blame. He was crucified by the collective crowd of the human race. All of us together. We don't stand in the shoes of the Sanhedrin. We can't play the role of Judas. While we may identify with Peter, we can't play his part either. We, the human race, find our voices in the voice of the crowd, in the cruelty of their collective cry. Crucify him. Did you see what I did there? In the cruelty of their collective cry? Who is there exactly? There is them. And they are always someone other than me. The crowd killed Jesus, but grace can't be received by a crowd. Grace can only be received by a person. That's what salvation by grace through faith means. It happens when I decide to step out of the crowd and take personal responsibility, not for my part of the crime, but for the whole thing, as though it were solely my fault. Only then do I realize the person who bore no responsibility for any of it actually took on total responsibility for all of it. Salvation by grace through faith means coming to the experiential ownership that I give deserve all the blame. Yet because of the finished work of Jesus, death and resurrection, I am now deemed blameless. It was my fault, but I am deemed faultless. I simply cannot bear that Responsibility. Neither can I absolve myself of it. Only God can. It astonishes me even to write it, much less speak it aloud. I only need believe it. Only that will make me the kind of person God had in mind when he first imagined me. There is no better news than this. This, my friends, is the gospel. Let's pray.
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Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me and melt me, Mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
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Amen. I hope you're singing that with me. I can hear a number of you singing. I'm wanting those of you who are out there, and you're like, man, I ain't singing on this thing. I'm not singing on the Internet in my house. Here with this crazy guy singing out there in Gillette, Arkansas. I'm coming for you right now. I want you to sing with me tomorrow. Okay? I'm gonna give you. You got one more chance in this series. I want you to sing with me. We'll sing again today here with dad before we're done, but got a journal prompt for us. Does it seem like an injustice for you to accept total responsibility for the death of Jesus? And if so, why? Why does that seem like an injustice? I really want you to wrestle with this one today. I often say to my church in Gillette, I'll say he paid a debt he did not owe. And then a bunch of them will just come right back at me by saying, because we owed a debt we could not pay. And really, we should take that a step further. He paid a debt he did not owe because I owed a debt I could not pay. And it was my debt that he took upon himself on that cross, as though I were the only debtor. Isn't that something? That's how much he loves you and me. He did it not for the crowd. He did it for you. He did it for me. He did it for every single person on the planet, whoever will live. But we've got to come to the place of owning it, owning my responsibility and accepting his grace. Have you done that? I mean, this is not like just assenting to it in your head. This is not like a mental ascent to a propositional truth. This is a real, real thing. And many people you're like, well, I just don't know if I can go there today. I. I don't know if I can accept total. Why not wrestle? Would you wrestle with it today? That's what I'm Asking you. All right, we're going to hand it over. Dad's here. We're going to sing. It's going to be good.
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That's right.
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All right, everybody. Dad, as we've just coming on the air here, he's had a brilliant idea. We'll share it with you. He's going to tell you in just a second. But we're closing out. We're coming down to the wire on Mark's Gospel, and we're going to sing our way all the way to the cross, through the cross to the tomb and out the other side. That's what. That's what this is about. So, dad, tell them what we're singing.
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First. We're going to sing Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
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What's the number?
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It's 4 85.
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4 8, 5. Now tell them kind of what we're going to try to do here. Okay, this is your idea.
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I'm going to sing what Can Wash Away My Sin. And John David's going to sing Nothing but the Blood of Jesus. I'm coming back, Coming back with what can make me whole again. He's coming back with Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
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And then we're going to sing it all together.
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Let's sing all this next two lines together.
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Okay. Well, let's. Let's do it.
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We'll try it. What can what can wash my sin away? Nothing but the blood of Jesus what can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow no other fount I know Nothing but the blood of Jesus for my pardon this I see Nothing but the blood of Jesus for my cleansing this my plea Nothing but the blood of Jesus O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow O other fount I know Nothing but the blood of Jesus Nothing can for sin atone Nothing but the blood of Jesus Note of good that I have done Nothing but the blood of Jesus O precious is the glow that makes me white as snow no other fount I know Nothing but the blood of Jesus this is all my hope and peace Nothing but the blood of Jesus this is all my righteousness Nothing but the blood of Jesus O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow O other fountain Nothing but the blood of Jesus Good job, dad. Amen, brother.
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That was a great idea.
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Yeah.
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I bet you that there's people all over the place out there who did it. Just like we did it.
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They will now. And you know what? They'll probably do it better.
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No Doubt we ought to try that in church sometime.
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Yeah.
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Gillette, Gillette, Arkansas.
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We'll sure do it.
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Well, everybody is getting time to get out on the fields today. It's going to be a good day. We're going to finish Mark's gospel tomorrow. And then I was going to tell you what's coming next next week on the Wake Up Call said it last week, but we've got a new, a brand new seedbed author Lou Ann Riley, the Reverend Lou Ann Riley. She is a mom, she is a preacher, she is a Bible teacher. She leads a women's Bible study down in the Woodlands, Texas called Radiant. And we just got to know her and were blown away by the quality of her teaching, her faith and just her character. I mean, you're going to love her. And we've released a brand new study. It's a women's Bible study. If you are a woman and you are in the church or maybe you're not even in the church, you need to get this. It's called Growing Faith Lessons from the Life of from the Book of James.
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And when does it start?
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Oh, thanks, dad. Well, Luann's coming on next week. She's going to lead us Monday through Friday, a little mini study series on James. And then her study is available. Now you see it up on the banner of the Wake Up Call email today. We'll put it in the notes of the other platforms. You can go to cbed.com and find it. Luann Riley. Luann is originally from Luverne, Alabama. I said it before, she's Southern, she's smart and she is full of the Lord.
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She's not a Yankee.
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She's not a Yankee. Now we love Yankees on the wake up call.
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Amen. We love them all.
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But she's from the Deep south and she has a wonderful Southern accent. You're going to love it. And I want women all over the place to be doing this Bible study this fall. There's videos every week. There's like, this is six, seven week study. There's a video teaching video. There's a workbook for everybody to do the, the homework in. And it's going to be a blessing. And we've, we've even got some more teed up after that one. So be sure to welcome her. It can probably be like, I don't know what it feels like to come on the wake up call if you're a guest. I know what it feels like to be me. It's not easy. So it must be even harder to be a guest, but, yeah, they listen
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more on a guest than on the other part.
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There you go, Luann, you heard that? I hope they're going to be listening more to you. So that's enough. That's a wrap for today. We've won the day because we've won the morning. And now for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David Walt. And we'll see you on the field.
Episode: Why It's All Your Fault
Date: July 30, 2026
Host: J.D. Walt
Guest: David Walt ("Dad")
This episode of The Wake-Up Call centers on the profound theme of personal responsibility in the crucifixion of Jesus, rooted in Mark 15. J.D. Walt challenges listeners to move beyond blaming "the crowd" or historical figures and to accept—and wrestle with—the deeply personal nature of Christ’s sacrifice. The episode culminates in a heartfelt hymn and a reflective journal prompt, inviting each listener to grapple with the enormity of grace and the intimate call of the gospel.
On the Gospel's Scandal:
"The miracle of redemption happened because the blameless one took our blame. He was crucified by the collective crowd of the human race. All of us together."
— J.D. Walt (08:35)
On Grace and Responsibility:
“Grace can only be received by a person. That's what salvation by grace through faith means. It happens when I decide to step out of the crowd and take personal responsibility, not for my part of the crime, but for the whole thing, as though it were solely my fault.”
— J.D. Walt (09:07)
Reflective Challenge:
“Have you done that? ... This is not like just assenting to it in your head ... This is a real, real thing. ... Why not wrestle? Would you wrestle with it today? That's what I'm asking you.”
— J.D. Walt (11:52)
Communal Encouragement:
“I want you to sing with me tomorrow. Okay? You got one more chance in this series. I want you to sing with me.”
— J.D. Walt (10:33)
This episode offers a compelling invitation: to step out of the anonymity of the crowd, accept personal guilt—and, in doing so, receive the utterly personal grace afforded by Jesus’ sacrifice. The blend of scriptural insight, pastoral encouragement, and communal worship models a deep, daily walk with Christ. Listeners are left with a challenging question to ponder, a hymn to carry in their hearts, and anticipation for continued spiritual growth in the episodes ahead.