Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Okay, well, I'm Dave, if you don't know me already, I'm part of the church here, and I've been asked to bring a word. It's always important to me when we look at the Bible, Phil said it earlier on, that you connect with the people that you're reading about. You know, when you read a book or you watch a film or something, you can see it as something that happens out there, or you can identify and connect with the people that are in the story. And I think when we read the Bible, it's always good to remember that these are real people in real time, in their real lives. And the things that they face are real problems. And because they're people, we can identify with them, and we can learn something from the way that God wants us to deal with stuff by positive and negative examples from scripture. So today we're going to look at three people that are mentioned together for just a very brief moment during Jesus trial. We're going to look at Jesus, Pilate, and Barabbas, and I'm going to bring you what happened to them a little bit in the historical context, a little bit of biblical context, and I hope that will help you to connect with the people so that you can learn something from what they did.
[00:01:20] We know that the jewish authorities had broken their very strict rules about trials and had arranged for Jesus to be arrested and wanted to put him to death. But they didn't have the authority to do that because they themselves only had spiritual authority, which is quite a lot, given the jewish context. But it wasn't the complete authority that was with the Romans under the governor Pontius Pilate. So they had Jesus bound, and they took him to pilate, and they handed him over to the roman authorities. But they continued to manipulate the situation because they wanted to bring about the crucifixion of Jesus. So I'm going to be looking at a synchronized version of the scriptures, little bits from all of the different scriptures, so that we can get the detail that we need for the points that I want to make this morning. So the scriptures are going to be on the screen behind me, and I want you to notice the detail, particularly about Pilate and Barabbas. You may not be as familiar with them as you are with Jesus. Anyway, let's read it together, and I'll trust that it comes up early in the morning. All the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. The governor Pilate said, take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. But we have no right to execute anyone. The Jews objected. So Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people. And said to them, you brought me this man as one who is inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence. And found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he has sent him back to us. As you can see, he has done nothing wrong to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.
[00:03:07] Now, it was the governor's custom at the feast. To release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time, they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas.
[00:03:18] So Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists. He committed murder in the uprising. And the crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. Which of the two do you want me to release to you? Asked the governor. Barabbas, they answered, what shall I do then with Jesus, who is called Christ? Pilate asked. They all answered, crucify him. Why? What crime has he committed? Asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, crucify him.
[00:03:48] Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, crucify him. Crucify him. With loud shouts, they insistently demanded that he be crucified. And their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand.
[00:04:05] When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting. He took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. I am innocent of this man's blood, he said. It's your responsibility.
[00:04:18] All the people answered, let his blood be on us and on our children.
[00:04:23] Then he released Barabbas to them. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe. And went up to him again and again, saying, hail, king of the Jews. And they struck him in the face.
[00:04:40] When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, here is the man.
[00:04:48] Here is your king. Pilate said to the Jews. Finally, Pilate handed him over to be crucified. Let's pray. Father, when we look at your word together. We know that it is really words on a page. Words that we can hear. But, Father, we pray that you would add your spirit. So that our spiritual ears are opened. And our spiritual eyes are opened. And we can see something and connect with something that brings truth to bear in our lives. In Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:19] So the first character I want to talk about for a couple of minutes is Jesus.
[00:05:24] Pilate uses two phrases in John's account which are really crucial, really interesting, I think. In the first, he says, behold the man. In the second, he says to the crowd, behold the king.
[00:05:38] Both are important because they point us towards so much in Jesus. First, Pilate's comment highlights the humanity of Jesus, although that's all he sees.
[00:05:52] There's a warning to us today as we see Jesus in his trial. We must not get distracted by our knowledge that he's the son of God. To think that somehow, because of his divinity, he could turn off the pain, turn off the humiliation and the isolation of this moment.
[00:06:11] In truth, his suffering was severe because he was just a man and he felt the pain and the humiliation and all the rest of it, just like you and I would.
[00:06:22] But then the other phrase, behold your king, seems to point towards the importance of the moment.
[00:06:29] Jesus points and leads us into a supernatural kingdom. Jesus is king of kings.
[00:06:37] Well, he was certainly under a lot of pressure at this moment. Here is the man, beaten and handed over to crucifixion.
[00:06:45] But here is the king, calm, with incredible control, security, grace and discipline, standing before people whom he loved and reaching out to all of them with truth. He was fully God and fully man.
[00:07:04] Well, now let's move on and look at Pilate. Pilate was between a rock and a hard place. He's under pressure. Roman records tell us a little bit about him. For example, he was unqualified for the job.
[00:07:18] Pilate didn't have a wealthy upbringing, even though he was middle class, but he had served without distinction in the roman army in Germany. And during a long stay in Rome, he met, fell in love with, and married Claudia Procula, who was the illegitimate daughter of the emperor Tiberius, and therefore the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus.
[00:07:41] Because of these social connections, Pilate was given a permission, a position that he could never have aspired to. In AD 26, he was appointed to be the governor of Judea. Luke three. One tells us that Pilate was governor when John the Baptist began his ministry. So he would have been there for about four years when Jesus was brought to him.
[00:08:05] But listen, like many people who are not qualified for their job, he was drowning. He was tactless and stubborn, cruel and hard, and he used his authority to enforce his will on the people.
[00:08:23] This isn't leadership.
[00:08:26] And he was unpopular with the jewish people. Eventually, he lost his position because of cruelty. But even now, he was floundering.
[00:08:34] I've just said a lot of negatives, but I wonder if anybody here has ever felt that they're a bit out of their depth with the job they've been tasked to do. Because I know I have. And when I read about Saul in the Old Testament and how he struggled to make leadership decisions because he was afraid of the people's response, I look at Pilate and I say, here is a man who is frightened of his supervisors, frightened of the emperor, knowing that the Jews every now and then would say things like, well, if you don't do what we say, we'll tell the emperor, the Caesar, we'll tell him that you don't love him, you don't follow him. So Pilate was caught as a weak man, out of his depth, struggling to do what he was trying to do, frightened of those above him and frightened of those below him.
[00:09:26] I've been in that place.
[00:09:28] I've worked in a job where I was made a manager, but they wouldn't give me any training. And my staff, I was working in the job centre, and I had the biggest section with the biggest number of claims for unemployment benefit in the whole of the southwest, and they wouldn't train me in taking claims or maintaining claims. So I then had to do annual reports on my staff that had been doing it for, like, ten years. And I was thinking, how on earth do I. How do I report on them and say whether they're doing a good job or not? Because I don't know what their job is. And I was struggling. I felt completely out of my depth.
[00:10:07] And when you're like that, there's two ways you can go. One is to look at your staff and worry about what they're saying in the tea room when you're not there. Or you can look at your boss worried about your own performance marking when it comes to getting a financial reward at the end of the year? Or you could say, do you know what? I'm just going to put my faith in God. If I put my faith in God, I get my security for him from him. And that's what I did. And I was blessed. I was a youth pastor at the time of quite a big youth work in Plymouth, and I realized that a lot of the training that I was getting, or experience maybe that I was getting in a job center, helped me to understand people. And so I learned how to understand what was going through their minds and how to deal with people when they're in crisis and all kinds of stuff. And I. I recognized that that was an investment into the kingdom. I wasn't really. I just wanted to do my job. I didn't want to let God down or do it badly, but I recognized that I could take what I was learning at work and invest it in the kingdom. God redeems all kinds of stuff, and in the end, ironically, and I'm not showing off, I was the fastest promoted person in the southwest because the bosses thought I knew what I was doing, and they thought I was doing my job. I've also believed that I was given a gift of looking like I know what I'm doing and sounding as if I have authority. But I know that it's like the proverbial duck that swims around serene and he's paddling like crazy under the water there. That's how I was. But anyway, that's how Pilate was.
[00:11:46] Sometimes when I read the Bible and I come across people that you feel like this is meant to be negative, isn't it, Saul? Isn't he meant to be negative? He didn't do a great job from what we read in the Bible, although God kept him there for 40 years. So he must have been doing something that was all right with God. We don't believe in karma, do we? So it wasn't like reward for karma, but he made a pig's ear of it overall because he was frightened of people more than he was frightened of God. And there's some amazing stories. I won't preach about Saul, but there's amazing stories that illustrate that. And here Pilate, is he meant to be a positive or a negative example because you think, well, he's Roman, it must make him negative, don't you? Don't you? He crucified Jesus. That means he must be all bad.
[00:12:34] But I look at him, and I just find that I can sympathize with him because I can see some of his fears and struggles reflected in my life. And if we're honest, well, you may not be, because you're all looking at me with stony faces like Mount Rushmore. But for me, I know that I need God to help me to deal with those things, to soften my hard edges, to soften my heart, to turn my heart from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh and blood that knows that he loves me and therefore receives that love. Because if I don't, I build a mask and a wall around me a bit like Pilate did. He did it by being angry with everybody and cruel and hard and tactless and stubborn and stamping his feet and sulking like a brat.
[00:13:23] I don't want to go that way. I want to go the soft way. I want to go the Jesus way. I want to worship God and say, God has given me this opportunity, and God will allow me and help me to make the most of it.
[00:13:39] He probably felt that he couldn't afford to be seen doing wrong, so somebody else had to be blamed for everything.
[00:13:46] This self justifying, blaming others attitude creates a blame culture where everybody gets paranoid and everybody does their best to say, well, it wasn't me, it was them.
[00:13:58] And it always leads, in my opinion, to moral bankruptcy, moral corruption. Has anybody here worked for an insecure boss again? I have. He would crush people with fault finding and self righteousness, yet he could never be straightforward and honest with himself.
[00:14:19] That's how Pilate was. And, folks, if you have the habit of blaming others for your mistakes or only seeing fault in other people, let me urge you to find your security in God and not your position and not your status and not your bank balance.
[00:14:38] The Bible encourages us to examine ourselves before we take communion. We are supposed to examine ourselves so that we can be realistically ruthless with our self criticism, not negativity about who we are, but ready to see, admit, and correct our mistakes and weaknesses.
[00:14:58] But it has to be based on finding our security in Jesus and not any other measure of worldly success.
[00:15:06] So in contrast, we see Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus, who, being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, who made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, who, being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
[00:15:32] That's all in Philippians two six eight. Jesus, the king of glory, humbled himself to become a man so that he could die on a cross.
[00:15:45] So here you have these two men. Pilate, with a rank that he should never have risen to, and Jesus with the rank that he should never have descended to.
[00:15:54] And so Pilate tried to escape responsibility by compromise.
[00:16:00] Pilate had every opportunity to make the right choice, every authority to make the right choice, but none of the confidence.
[00:16:09] He decided to protect his own position rather than do the right thing by washing his hands before the crowd. He was sending a message to the jewish crowd would have understood exactly what he was doing. This ritual washing of his hands was not actually a roman ceremony. It was a jewish ceremony. According to Deuteronomy 21 six nine, this is what the elders were to do in the case of an unsolved murder.
[00:16:38] They were to publicly declare their innocence in this way. And that's exactly what Pilate was trying to do.
[00:16:47] But Pilate was not innocent of the blood of Jesus. He not only flogged an innocent man, but he authorized his death on the cross.
[00:16:58] Ritual alone could not change that fact.
[00:17:02] Even today, people try to use religious rituals in the way that Pilate did. People who have never given their lives to Christ, never surrendered to him, go through religious rituals like christening and even communion, thinking that these ceremonies will by themselves give them a right standing before God.
[00:17:27] But ritual without the spiritual is not sufficient.
[00:17:33] Pilate's ritual could not and did not remove his guilt.
[00:17:39] Folks, if you're faced with any kind of moral struggle, ask God to give you the courage to do the right thing, because it's in your actions there that God will be revealed, not in communion. I love communion. It's one of the things that we know that Jesus himself invited us to take part in all of the other things. Look it up in a red letter Bible, the way that all the black letters are stuff that Jesus didn't say, and all the red letters are stuff that Jesus did say, and you will find that he invites you and I to the table for communion.
[00:18:13] But if you just do it out of ritual, out of thinking it's the right thing, it means nothing. And actually the Bible teaches that as well, that if you take it in a wrong way, you bring condemnation on yourself. I remember talking one time whether non Christians should be turned away from the communion table. And I said, well, no, I dont think they should, because that implies that the condemnation that you bring on yourself is for non Christians. But actually theyre under condemnation anyway, arent they?
[00:18:46] They are. Did you know that? Non Christians are sitting under condemnation? So surely taking communion in the wrong manner is a warning for christians, and its an invitation to get right with God before you take communion. Otherwise you bring some kind of problem on your head. So dont just do it for the ritual, do it for the reality. Because God wants to transact with you. He wants to take your rubbish and give you some of his glory. Thats a good thing, isnt it? Yeah. Im glad some of you think so.
[00:19:20] So allow him to address your conscience with truth. Decide right here and now that you will live a life where there is no compromise, no selling out, just a simple commitment to do the right thing at the right time and let God take care of the rest.
[00:19:40] Doing the right thing can be very costly. You know, I've known friends of mine who have done the right thing, and it seems to have led them into a wilderness experience. It seems to lead them into difficulty, but they did the right thing with the right thing in mind and the right God honoring decision process. And what that means is that when you're going through something, just remember God has got something to teach you in it, so that when you come through the end of it, you realize that it might not have felt great, but actually it was fantastic. I don't think Jesus enjoyed the wilderness experience, but when he came out of it, he began his ministry.
[00:20:22] So doing the right thing is important. Now, the last guy here, Barabbas, unexpected freedom. The Bible tells us very little about Barabbas christian history, which is not to be trusted as much as the Bible tells us a little bit more. But let's ignore that, because it's not in the Bible. And let's see what is there in the Bible and see once more the contrast with Jesus.
[00:20:45] So we know his name, Barabbas. This can be understood as meaning son of the father. Bar means son of Abba means daddy. And it's actually the name that Jesus used most often when he talked about God the father. So if Barabbas means son of a father, well, do you know what?
[00:21:08] We're pretty much all that, aren't we?
[00:21:10] Whether you know your father or not, there was a father involved in the creative process that brought you into this world.
[00:21:19] So therefore, Barabbas stands for every man, all of us.
[00:21:25] Now, Barabbas was notorious, famous for negative reasons. He was a criminal, a murderer. Jesus was famous for positive reasons. Crowds always came to him for healing or for other blessings. And when he arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they cheered him and welcomed him as a king riding on a donkey, probably when they were in Pilate's courts, it was the same people, which is amazing, isn't it?
[00:21:56] Yes, Dave.
[00:22:00] Barabbas was a prisoner because he was guilty. Jesus was a prisoner, too, but Jesus was innocent.
[00:22:09] So Barabbas, the murderer, a man who destroyed life and laid people in their graves. Jesus, the creator of life, he raised people from their graves. Barabbas was a rebel who was part of an insurrection. Jesus was accused of insurrection, but in fact was innocent, and even taught his followers to pay their taxes to Caesar.
[00:22:33] We know that Barabbas was sentenced to death.
[00:22:37] So was Jesus.
[00:22:40] Christian tradition, which we're not worried about, tells us that his first name was Jesus, that he was Jesus Barabbas. So that the link is there even more starkly. But we'll leave that aside because it's not in the Bible, but I think there's something that's very interesting here that we can find from a bit of archaeology.
[00:22:59] I want you to think about the story from Barabbas's perspective.
[00:23:04] The prison that he was kept in was about five or 600 meters away from where Jesus was being tried. And the crowd were shouting very loudly. There was a lot of them. And when they shouted together, they could be heard.
[00:23:20] So Barabbas is in his cell. He knows that these are his last moments of life.
[00:23:27] This was a distressing time for him. Just yesterday, a roman carpenter had come to measure the span of his hands so that they didn't use the wrong sized cross piece for the cross that he was going to be hung on.
[00:23:42] Just imagine that the cross piece that was made for him to carry to Golgotha is just the right size for every man.
[00:23:53] He's desperate, he's angry, he's looking for a way out. And he hears a noise. He hears a crowd shouting his name.
[00:24:01] He listens hard, but all he can hear is the crowd. He can't make out what Pilate is saying. He can't hear what anybody is saying if they're just one person, because they're five or 600 meters away. But you get a crowd shouting. Have you ever walked past a football up Leeds somewhere? There's a football, and when you walk past it, when they're playing Everton, you can hear whatever. But anyway, you can hear a crowd from outside and you can hear this crowd from inside his prison cell. So what does he hear?
[00:24:34] Well, Pilate says, which man do you want me to release, Jesus, Barabbas or Jesus, son of God? Barabbas cant hear that.
[00:24:45] What he hears is Barabbas, so he listens.
[00:24:50] Theyve caught his attention because he hears his name, Barabbas, Pilate says, which you cant hear. What shall I do with Jesus? The crowd shouts, crucify him. What is Barabbas here? Crucify him.
[00:25:04] So all barabbas can hear are three words. Barabbas his name. Crucify him. His sentence.
[00:25:12] What would that do to your head in your last moments in your prison cell full of fear, knowing that you're going to be crucified and you deserve it. Knowing that you got all that punishment to come and you deserve it. Knowing that somebody's even measured the space of your hands, because that's what they're going to do to you. And then you hear that there's a crowd outside. Anybody seen a western where the lynch mob turns up and the prisoner knows that the lynch mob is going to drag them out and hang them. That's how Barabbas felt that moment of terror. Barabbas crucify him.
[00:25:49] Imagine what it felt like when he heard the lock on the door opening.
[00:25:53] He must have been so scared.
[00:25:57] Must have been so frightened because he was going to meet his end and was he going to be torn apart? Was he going to even survive long enough to get that thing up to a Golgotha?
[00:26:09] And then the prison guards come in and they say, go. You're free to go.
[00:26:15] Free.
[00:26:17] Free to go. Were they playing with him in that panic of his mind? Were they teasing him? Were they just trying to twist the knife? Were they just trying to make it worse?
[00:26:29] You're free to go, Barabbas. Somebody else is dying in your place.
[00:26:35] Whether we want to admit it or not, Barabbas identifies every one of us, every man.
[00:26:42] The Bible says that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in romans 323. And just like Barabbas, we were sitting bound in prison with the death sentence placed upon us. Now, we may never have done anything as bad as Barabbas. We might not be murderers or insurrectionists. We might never have even stolen sweets when we were a kid on the way home from school. I take that as confession.
[00:27:09] But we have sinned. And sin is sin in the eyes of God.
[00:27:15] So Barabbas deserved to be punished. A murderer and a thief already convicted of those crimes. And under the law, he knew what was coming.
[00:27:28] But then they took that cross, the one that was made for every man, and they placed it on Jesus.
[00:27:36] And Jesus literally carries Barabbas cross to Golgotha.
[00:27:43] Jesus was literally crucified on the cross for Barabbas. Every man who represents you and I. Don't you think that's fantastic?
[00:27:55] Don't you think that's phenomenal? In the film the passion, Mel Gibson shows Barabbas pausing on the steps, just for a second, as if he finally understands what Jesus has done for him.
[00:28:09] But the Bible doesn't record his reaction to these events.
[00:28:13] There's no record of gratitude, no record of thanks, no record of worship.
[00:28:21] Barabbas just disappears into history.
[00:28:24] That's exactly what some people do to Jesus today.
[00:28:28] He came to set us free. He paid the ultimate price for our sin on the cross. And yet some fail even to acknowledge him. Some of us see that as such an amazing thing. We don't know how to acknowledge him. Some of us need worship leaders to help us to sing. I'm going to say it for Phil. All hail, Redeemer. Hail, for thou hast died for me.
[00:28:57] We need people to write those wonderful poems and tunes to help us to understand how to respond to the fact that Jesus died for us.
[00:29:08] When he went to the cross, he took all of our sins and took all of the punishment for our sins. Theologically, this is called the doctrine of substitution, substitutionary sacrifice.
[00:29:21] God treated Jesus on the cross as if he had committed all the sins of the world, though he never committed any.
[00:29:30] God treats christian believers today as though we are righteous, even though we still sin.
[00:29:38] Barabbas discovered substitutionary grace that day, and I just wonder, how about you? How about me?
[00:29:46] Have I discovered substitutionary grace not just in writing a sermon, but in my soul?
[00:29:54] Do you understand substitutionary grace today, not just listening to me talking, but in your soul, where it really counts?
[00:30:05] How do we respond?
[00:30:08] Well, we respond by giving our lives to him, by embracing the opportunity that he achieved for us, by taking our cross, your cross, and my cross on his back to the place of crucifixion, by giving him our lives and being adopted into his family, and by calling him God. Abba, Jesus, brother, whatever word suits your circumstances, in the moment, he's all of those things. And more substitutionary grace is yours. You can't earn it. Barabbas couldn't earn it. He couldnt turn his life around. He couldnt suddenly know how to behave properly in company.
[00:30:52] But Jesus died for him.
[00:30:57] The thief on the cross had no time to turn his life around, had no time to put things right. But Jesus died for him and promised him, this day youll be with me in paradise. So where are you?
[00:31:12] When we were praying before the service and Esther repeated afterwards, she talked about burdens and that God wants to lift people's burdens today. And when we were worshiping, I wrote down a few burdens that I think are highlighted in the sermon.
[00:31:29] So if you are going through a personal trial, let us, as a church, pray for you for dignity and grace in your trial.
[00:31:41] When you are under pressure and overwhelmed, let us pray for you to be controlled and calm in your circumstances.
[00:31:50] If you put your faith in security in your world, your bank balance, your job, your boss, your staff, whatever it is, or your home, whatever it is, all those things can go in a moment.
[00:32:06] Put your security in him.
[00:32:09] If you suffer from the fear of man, and I believe ive been a pastor for a long time and a youth pastor before that for a long time. I believe that fear of man is one of the commonest things that the devil uses to hinder gods, people to make us walk with a limp, and we get distracted by what other people think of us.
[00:32:30] If you suffer from the fear of man, let us pray as a church for confidence in God.
[00:32:37] If you find yourself going through empty ritual and religion, then let us pray for you for holy spirit and faith.
[00:32:47] If you're going through a moral struggle, let us pray that you find righteousness. If you're going through sin, let us find for you, pray for you for forgiveness. Lastly, if you feel condemned by your life, let us pray that you find substitutionary grace.
[00:33:04] I'm going to give an altar call. When I was a little boy, I was in the scouts, and we had to go to the Salvation army. I probably told you this last time I spoke, but they have a thing called the mercy seat at the front of the church. And I love the idea. I love the concept. The mercy seat in the Old Testament is where people went to find mercy from God. So let's call this front row the mercy seat. And let me just say to you, if you would like somebody to pray with you, that your burdens are lifted, come and sit in the mercy seat and meet with God. And there are people here that will pray with you, leaders of the church, life, group leaders, whoever, we know that there are people here that will pray for you. And if you have burdens that I've listed, and if you've got burdens that I didn't listen, come to the front and just sit here for a few moments and let us pray with you. Because the promise of God in scripture is substitutionary grace. The promise of God in prophecy this morning, both before and during the service, is that he will lift your burden.
[00:34:06] So come and meet with him. If you don't come, then I think, great, we've got a perfect church. I better leave and go somewhere else because I mess it up. But you don't feel obliged. You haven't got to come forward. This is an opportunity to come and meet with the one that loves you. Amen.
[00:34:22] Father, I thank you for your word. Thank you for your promises. Thank you for your spirit. And I pray now, Lord, that if there are people here today that need to have prayer, you give them the courage to respond and come forward. And I pray that your holy spirit will flow and bring the ministry they need in Jesus name. Amen.
