CHRIST OR BARABBAS?
There are only two choices before all men. Only two names on the ballot paper, two roads before us, two destinies. Only two. Not six thousand million, just two. One day we must either be a sheep or a goat. One day we must come to the end of the one road we have chosen - the broad road which leads to destruction, or the narrow road which leads to life. Only two; that's what the Lord Jesus Christ said. It was like that in the Old Testament. There was the line of Cain and there was the line of Abel. There was the seed of the serpent and there was the seed of the woman.
And in this courtyard of Pilate's palace the choice has been spectacularly plain - the focus is so very clear. Here is Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus of Nazareth. One is a descendant of Cain and the other is a descendant of Abel. Barabbas was a murderer - he was a violent man. He shed his blood. The Lord Jesus was holy and harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners and he gave his blood to save others. Barabbas and the Lord Jesus Christ.
To vote for Barabbas is not to vote for the Lord Jesus Christ. To put a cross by Barabbas' name is to negate Christ. Last week we listened to the voice of a woman who wanted to touch the heart of her husband and to protect him from doing a terrible thing. She wanted to frighten him. She wanted to restrain him from condemning the Lord Jesus. But the voice of the woman is lost in the crowd - the noise of a shouting mob baying for the blood of Christ, gathered before the palace of Pilate.
Pilate was losing control. He had listened to his wife but had said, as many do say, 'it's easy for her to talk'. That's what people do say - 'it's easy for you to talk about religion; it's easy for you to talk about the Lord Jesus'. It's the most difficult thing, really, for us to talk about him, but that is what people will say. 'I've got this mob on my hands, I've got lots of other things to think about, I've got serious things to think about - my future is on the line,' people say.
And so Pilate thought he was between a rock and a hard place, but he didn't realise that the rock was the Rock of Ages and the hard place was the eternal punishment of hell. That's the rock and the hard place between which all men must live their lives. He wanted to free Jesus, but he knew he was rowing against the current.
The first thing I want you to notice is how Pilate faces the mob a third time, and he asks them which of the two they want released. He has done this twice before. They shout back, with one voice, 'Barabbas!'. And then he made them face up to the question of Jesus - the destiny of Jesus. 'What shall I do, then, with Jesus? What shall I do with Jesus? What shall I do?'. What shall we do with Jesus? What will you do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?
John Stott was a teenager in Rugby school. He came from a respectable medical home in London - but not a religious home. His mother was religious and went along to all sorts of things, but was uncertain about her understanding of the grace of God and the cross of Christ. He was in his teenage years, wondering what to do with his life, and there was a religious meeting to which he was invited. A clergyman called Nash came along, and this clergyman's great calling and gift was to work with upper-class boys in public schools in England. He came to that meeting, and John Stott was sitting there, a little teenager, and the text was this: 'What shall I do, then, with Jesus, who is called the Christ?'. It was very striking to John Stott, because he never thought you had to do anything with Jesus. Jesus simply was. You didn't have to do anything with Jesus any more than you had to do anything with the rain, or the air that we breathe, or Napoleon. It was a great thought, a new thought. What am I going to do with Jesus? What am I going to do with Jesus?
This was the question, then, that Pilate asked the mob. They wanted Barabbas. They chose the revolutionary. They wanted a man who opposed Rome. They wanted his shackles to be taken off and his chains to be unlocked, and they would all walk out of the courtyard and down the hill to the tavern, and there they would toast his health and slap him on the back and hope that he would have a prosperous free future. But then that still leaves Jesus. When the pub is closed, and the money has all been spent, and you've drunk all that you've got to drink, what are you going to do with Jesus?
There's always Jesus. There's always Jesus, there's always the teaching. It's there, isn't it? The Sermon on the Mount is there, the gospels are there, John's gospel is there. There's the teaching of Jesus, there's the text outside the church, the tracts you are given, the sermons being preached, there are followers of the Lord Jesus, there is always Jesus.
There's this man who speaks and the winds obey him. What are you going to do with a man like that? What are you going to do with a blameless man? A man in whose life you can't find any silly words spoken, cruel words, hard words. What are you going to do with Jesus? What are you going to do with the one who said 'I and my Father are one'? What are you going to do with a man who makes a claim like that, a man who says 'before Abraham was, I am - I go right back, back to the beginning; in the beginning, I was'? What are you going to do with a man who makes a claim like that? What are you going to do with a man who says 'I have come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly'? What are you going to do with a man who says he has come to give us life - that we don't have life unless he gives it to us? What shall I do? What shall I do with Jesus? What will we all do with Jesus?
Pilate is very pointed, isn't he? He's very focussed - 'with Jesus, who is called the Christ'. That's very important. In other words, this isn't just some wild-eyed fanatic rolling his eyeballs and foaming at the mouth and shouting 'the end is nigh'. This is a highly sane man. This is the great definition of what it is to be sane. Here is the proper man, the archetypal man, God's great definition of what manhood is all about. Here it is. And there were many, about five hundred, all around him, who believed he was the Messiah. Not just another healer - a wonderful healer - and a prophet, but that there was something sublime about Jesus. That there was something majestic, something of heaven, something of glory about the Lord Jesus. That he was discontinuous from any other man, that he was not in the same category, that he was in a category all by himself. This is Jesus.
A cousin of mine had an upbringing in a wonderfully cultured home where music and books were all the life of her and her brothers and cousins, but there was never any discussion about religion. Never. It was just a closed subject. They never went to church. They weren't interested in religion. They had dismissed it all. But then she began to hear of this Jesus, and she began to read, and her heart was touched and it beat faster. She was drawn to him.
It was a lovely home, an interesting home, but this whole spectrum of life eternal was missing - and earth so fleeting. 'All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is a flower of grass.' The grass withers. We wither. Our beauty decays. There is something different in the Lord Jesus. He is the same yesterday and today. His beauty is relevant. 1999, we are going into the new century, new millennium now. Two thousand years seems yesterday. This relevant life. Many believed him to be the Messiah, the Christ. and thousands listened to him when he preached.
What am I going to do with him, then, with Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ? You say release Barabbas - well, that's easily done. The soldier will get the key and unlock the manacles, and the chains will fall away from him. But Jesus? "Jesus." It's the name of a person. He's not speaking of a principle, is he? Of a cause? This isn't Jesus-ism. This is Jesus, the son of Mary. His kith and kin are with us. What shall I do with Jesus? He is convincing them that he is a humane governor. There is nobody there from Jesus' own party. There is no disciple, no follower. There is no-one who is going to say a word for him there. It doesn't mean they don't exist. It's Jesus I must deal with. Jesus who is called the Christ. What shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ? What shall I do with Jesus? I am saying to you that there is no more important question that you can ever ask in your life than that question. What shall I do, then, with Jesus?
Have you any room for Jesus?
He who bore the load of sin
As he knocks and asks admission
Sinner, will you let him in?
Room for pleasure, room for business,
But for Christ, the crucified,
Not a place that he can enter
In your heart, the one who died?
Have you any room for Jesus
As in grace he calls again?
Oh, today is time accepted,
Tomorrow you may call in vain.
Room and time now give to Jesus,
Soon will pass God's day of grace
Soon thy heart, left cold and silent,
And thy Saviour's pleading cease.
Room for Jesus, King of glory,
Hasten now, his word obey,
Swing the heart's door widely open,
Bid him enter, while you may.
THE HATRED OF THE REJECTING PEOPLE.
And then you see the hatred, secondly, of the rejecting people: ' "Crucify him!" they all answered' (v. 22). Some people have thought Pilate was trying to orchestrate the release, not only of Barabbas, but of Jesus, too - to celebrate the Passover by a double amnesty. So Pilate hoped, people think, that when he said 'what shall I do, then, with Jesus', the crowd would shout 'release him, too!'. But he didn't know the crowd. He didn't know the plotting. He didn't know the depth of hatred there was towards him.
There was only one direction they wanted Jesus to go, and that was to Golgotha, and to the cross. He didn't understand that the high priests and the Sanhedrin didn't want Jesus stoned, they wanted him to die a specific death, the special death of the cross. They wanted him hung up between heaven and earth - hung up on a tree, as it were, because 'cursed is everyone who is hung upon a tree'. And that cursed death would prove that he was not the Son of God and certainly not the Messiah, because if God loved him as his Son, God wouldn't allow his son to die a cursed death. He would send the angels forth and they would zoom down and deliver him straight away. So once he had been hung on the cross, then everyone would know that he was totally discredited in his claims to be Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah.
So the mob, then, having been programmed by Caiaphas and Annas and the Sanhedrin, didn't shout 'away with him', or 'kill him', even, but they shouted 'Crucify him!'. Again, you will remember, Barabbas was on his way with two companions. Three of them had been arrested and condemned as revolutionary murderers, Barabbas was going to be released, and it was very easy for Jesus to take his place.
But the importance of this 22nd verse is that this death of Jesus has slipped out of a plotting by an envious high priest and his son-in-law. It has slipped out of the hands of the Sanhedrin, it has slipped out of Pilate's hands, and it is out of the control of Herod now too. This is now an affair that all the people - the whole people - have made their own. 'They all answered'. All answered. They were all involved, every voice shouted 'Crucify him!', like a great male voice choir singing in harmony, in unison, 'Crucify him, crucify him!'. Not just the chief priests now but all the people, not just the Pharisees but the man in the street too. The people who a week earlier had shouted 'Hosanna to the Son of David' were now chanting 'Crucify him!'. Young people: 'Crucify him!'. Timid spectators: 'Crucify him!'. Women: 'Crucify him!'. The fires of hell have fallen upon Jerusalem and the whole city is a conflagration of sound: 'Crucify God the Son! He must go to the cross'.
WHY SHOULD JESUS BE CRUCIFIED?
Thirdly you will notice Pilate's plea for some justification in verse 23: 'Why? What crime has he committed?'. Here is the Roman upholder of the law; some vestiges are still there of a belief in fair play and righteousness. And he is cutting at the rags of this - if he is going to have any sense of his calling as the procurator of this troublesome province. If he is going to condemn this man to be crucified - this young man - what for? What has he done?
So he wants facts. He wants witnesses, and he wants evidence. Some of you are rejecting Christ. You are more interested in lots of people than Jesus. Imagine. You are perhaps interested in images that you have of singers, and they are really foul-mouthed people who do terrible things. Or maybe sportsmen. You are more interested in them than you are interested in this fascinating person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
What has he done wrong for you to say no to Jesus? What has he done to you? Why are you ignoring him? Why are you saying 'back off'? Why are you saying 'don't talk to me, Dad, about religion'? Why are you saying 'I don't want to talk about Jesus'? What has he done to you? Has he done something so evil that you can't bear to hear his name? Is he a child molester? Is he a pornographer? Does he break up marriages? Is he a cheat? Is he a liar? Does he talk the talk but not walk the walk? Is he a hypocrite? Is he a murderer? What has he done? What has Jesus done? What crimes has he committed?
I will tell you. He has made the most tremendous claims about himself. That he has absolute divine authority: what he says, God says. That he is the norm for truth, for what is right. That he is equal with God: 'I and my Father are one'. That's his crime. That he is the light of the world. That the only way to God is by him. That one day we must all stand before him. That's the crime that he has committed. I'll tell you again. His great evil is that he says your life is indefensible. Your life. Your religion is unacceptable. The problem with you is not the problem of your upbringing, or your parents, or your home, or your education, or lack of money. Your problem is your heart. Your heart. When you go to another marriage, live in another place, go to another job, you take that whole heart with you. And out of it come lies and deceit and lust and witchcraft and fascination with the occult. It all comes out of your heart.
You need a new heart: that's what Jesus says. Except a man be born from above, he can't see, and he can't enter the kingdom of God - that is what Jesus says. And unless you become as a little child - that is, if you say 'I'm poor, and weak, and ignorant, and just a little person, and I can only get by if you help me and give me strength', that's the only way you'll enter the kingdom of heaven. That's what Jesus says about you. That's what he says about the great professors, the men who have all the degrees who have written all the books, and he says it about the most simple person. He says you have got to become as a child, and recognise your own need of a Heavenly Father, of a Great Shepherd.
But there is another evil that he has committed in the eyes of the world, and that is that he is unconventional. He breaks every mould, doesn't he? He breaks religious moulds. Look at his attitude towards religious taboos. He won't wash his hands and arms ceremoniously before he eats, like the Pharisees insisted. He doesn't practise fasting because he is with his friends, teaching. He goes to marriages and feasts. He eats and drinks with them. The bridegroom is present with the bride. When the bride and the bridegroom are there, we do not all fast on the wedding day. When he was here with us, the dead were raised, the leper was cleansed. It was 'blessed are you' because he was there.
Or think of his attitude to the Sabbath. He didn't have the Pharisees' attitude to the Sabbath. He didn't have all the little regulations about how far you could walk and no further. He didn't have a Pharisee's attitude to the Sabbath because he was the Lord of the Sabbath and the Sabbath had been made for man as a gift from God.
Think of his attitude towards the Samaritans, the butts of all the jokes, as we have Irish jokes and the Americans have Polack jokes. The fool for them was the Samaritan. The ignorant man is the Samaritan. The figure of pity and scorn is the Samaritan. But Jesus had to go to Samaria and minister to a woman there, and go to a Samaritan village and tell a story where not the Levite, not the good man, not one of us, helps, but a Samaritan helps. Jesus went out to people like that.
I am saying he was unconventional, and that's why they crucified him. He made great claims about himself, and they hated him, and that's why they crucified him. And he said we were like whited sepulchres - we were, by nature. We washed the outside, but the inside was festering death. People hated it, and they crucified him because of that.
You couldn't contain him, you couldn't predict him. You couldn't hold him down, you couldn't make him your bellboy, your puppy dog. You couldn't snap your fingers and he would come running, fawning before you. He wasn't like that at all. He was the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He was fresh in his loveliness.
Why was he so unconventional? Because he was obsessed with the will of God. That's why. That was his meat, that was his drink, every day to find the will of God - that is, to bring the will of God to bear on his relationship to Mum, Dad, brothers and sisters, neighbours. Do it. He was obsessed with it. See, you are obsessed with what your friends in school are going to think about you - that's your obsession. What the peer group, what your family thinks. You're obsessed with that - 'you go to chapel'! It paralyses you, makes you hesitate, so you don't speak, don't nail your colours up, the opportunity is gone.
Jesus said he had one great burden on his heart: what does God think? How can I please God, let God's will be done? And then, he was also totally committed to his neighbour. He loved his neighbour like he loved himself. The man who lived next door, literally. The person who lived the other side. The people he bumped into, needy people, awkward people, difficult people. You see, the trouble with our neighbours is that they are not like us. They are not beautiful like we are. They are not smart like we are. They haven't got money like we have. They're not young. Your neighbour is a collaborator with the government - a publican. Your neighbour is a woman, and she comes home late and you hear the taxi door slam, and when you talk to her there's alcohol on her breath, and her lipstick is smeared over her cheek. And that's your neighbour.
Jesus loved his neighbour enough to minister and care and give and spend for him. He's not like us. We do so little for our neighbours. He became relevant. He entered the situation wherever he was, because it mattered to him to do God's will, loving God, loving his neighbour. It was extraordinary that there weren't many others like him - that there were none others, only him. Only him in all the world who loved his neighbour like he loved himself and loved God with all his being. And if you've that kind of mind set, then you are unconventional, too. You don't fit in to Aberystwyth. There is nowhere in the world you will fit in.
WASHING YOUR HANDS OF JESUS
Finally, you will see how, when he can get no answer - only a shout of 'Crucify him, crucify him!' - Pilate washes his hands of the whole business (v. 24). He is caught between the gods of his wife's dream and the mob. Each one is pulling him in a different direction. Pilate has to hide his confusion and hide his weakness now. What does he do? He sends for a basin of water and he washes his hands. It's a famous scene in Victorian paintings - you know it well. It's saying 'I am guiltless of this matter'. It is a great symbolic statement. He's in this tough place, and there is no escape, and he is pressured into taking some action - an action he doesn't approve of. So in the presence of the people and looking up to heaven, he says 'please take note: I am not responsible for what is going to happen to this young man'.
Was it a Roman custom? Some people say it was. Was it a Jewish custom? Some people say it was. It doesn't matter, because all the mob understood. And all the world understands why Pilate washed his hands. Deuteronomy 21 has an incident - what happens if in a town there is a murder and it is unsolved? The elders are to come, and a heifer is to be taken and its neck is to be broken. Those that are standing around the heifer are to wash their hands and to say 'our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done'. It was a formality to say that they weren't responsible for the death of this person. They washed their hands. Psalm 26 - 'I wash my hands in innocence', and Psalm 73 says it. Pilate is saying 'I'm not responsible, I'm not responsible'. He goes home that night and Claudia looks to him and he says, 'it's all right, honey, it's OK. Jesus' blood isn't going to be crying out to heaven for vengeance on you and me. We're OK. The gods are not going to be angry with us'. He was a hypocrite. The washing of his hands is the kind of gesture that a hypocrite makes. He should free an innocent man. There was no evidence. There was no wickedness. 'Throw the case out,' he should have said. 'Bring on the next case!'. He was a man protected by a Roman legion - this man had a personal bodyguard, he lived behind walls and barred windows.
He cries 'it is your responsibility!' (v. 24). Isn't it interesting that this is the second time in the chapter that we have the phrase 'it is your responsibility'? The first occasion is at the beginning of the chapter, where Judas, overwhelmed with anguish and remorse, returns with the thirty pieces of silver and tries to give them back to the high priest, to Caiaphas and Annas and the others. 'I have sinned,' he says, 'I have betrayed innocent blood'. And the chief priests Caiaphas and Annas say to him 'what is that to us? That's your responsibility.' They bribed him, they haggled a deal, they paid him the thirty pieces of silver. They wanted an innocent man arrested, but then they say, Ah, well, that's your responsibility now, that's your responsibility.
And here is Pilate saying 'It's your responsibility' - saying it back to Caiaphas and Annas. Everybody wants to pass on their responsibility. Everybody wants to blame somebody else for the mess their lives are in, for the unbelief that they tolerate, for their agnosticism, for their atheism, for their godless living, and it is always somebody else's fault. They can blame the church, can't they, for the fact that they are not Christian. They can always find a reason - the church members were hypocrites, the preachers were boring, the Bible is incomprehensible. 'All you gave me was the Bible,' the man in hell said, 'that's all you gave me - the Bible! If I'd seen men risen from the dead, well, I'd be walking for Jesus!'. They never say 'I didn't want Jesus because I liked my sins, I liked my lifestyle, I liked to do it my way'.
The crowd eagerly responded when Pilate said 'It's your responsibility'. 'Sure,' they said. 'Let his blood be on us'. The blood is worthless. Every day we nick our fingers in the carpenter's shop and draw blood - we don't fuss over a drop of blood! And his blood! - a blasphemer's blood, a criminal's blood, ah, yes, that'll be on us and on our children. It's the sort of thing crowds shout, isn't it? Mobs in debates about abortion, and the angry women there, hissing at you, and screaming at you. A debate about homosexuality, and those men with lust and hatred in their eyes - it's the sort of thing that they shout out - 'may his blood be on us and on our heads'. We've all got to go to hell our own way, the politicians say. Let's go to hell our own way. Don't interfere in my life. We're going to hell - yes, and our children. We're going to hell. And there's no fear of God, and there's no fear of Christ, no fear of the eternal burnings.
They are exempt from the punishment. They have killed the Messiah, but they are exempt. Somehow, they are not responsible. They have rejected his teaching as a prophet. They've said no to the Sermon on the Mount. They have rejected his authority - healing, cleansing, delivering, exorcising. They have rejected his atonement, the great answer to our guilt, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from our sins. The marvellous grandeur of this narrative! Here is this man, thirty-one or thirty-two years of age. He's been ministering perhaps only fourteen month s, maybe just over two years - we usually say three years, but that would be the very maximum. And here's this tremendous talent. He says things that just live on and on, that no-one else in the world has ever said or ever will say. And that light, that blazing light is snuffed out. It burns so promisingly and fiercely, and what happens is that Barabbas is released, and Jesus is flogged and handed over to be crucified.
So the Pharisees go home, and Caiaphas and Annas go home to their wives, and Pilate goes home to Claudia and says 'let's have a glass of wine together and talk about it', and they all celebrate the Passover over the next hours. He tried to beat the system, and the system beat him - until God raised him from the dead. Yes, there's always the resurrection. There's always this discontinuity of this man from any other man. He lives! He comes, glorious, extraordinary, vital, again and again, talking, helping, teaching.
God loved him as he died. God loved his silence on trial. God loved his body in the grave, and God raised him from the dead. The God who has the whole world in his hands, the God who asks you the question, What are you going to do with Jesus?. What are you going to do with Jesus, who is called the Christ? You must do something, because he says he's your God and your Judge, and he'll become your Saviour. What are you going to do with Jesus?
It's a great challenge, isn't it? Here's the world's system, and the world seems to win. Secularism and atheism seem to be winning at the end of the twentieth century. You can belong to that, and then here he is. This risen Saviour, this alternate community that he builds up. A company of people whose obsession is the will of God. That's their ache, their itch - 'how can I do the will of God today? How can I glorify God and enjoy him today? How can I love my neighbour as myself today? Give me opportunities, lead me, guide me today'.
We can wash our hands of religion. We can say 'it's not my responsibility. God hasn't given me faith. The fault is somebody else's', or we can say 'the fault is mine, the pride is mine, the love of sin is mine. I wouldn't humble myself, and I answer now. I'm going to change. I'm going to take responsibility for my own unbelief. I'm going to take it to a fountain. I'm going to take the blood that's on me, of hurting others, I'm going to take that stain and I'm going to have it washed away.'
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
Sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
GEOFF THOMAS