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Alright, open up your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark, in chapter 15.
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Mark chapter 15.
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While you're turning there, while you're turning there, I need to tell you the end of a story.
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Because a few weeks ago, I told you about the time that my wife and I had these two foster children and their biological mother took us to court because the foster daughter who was in third grade said, "Is Santa Claus real?
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Some kids at school said he's not real." And I told her the truth, "Santa Claus is like Batman.
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He's not real, but it's okay to pretend." Remember that story?
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How many people remember that story?
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Well, like, we went to court over that and we're in the courthouse and in the courtroom and I'm on the stand in my little suit.
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And they're like, did you or did you not tell her that there is no Santa Claus?
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And I'm sitting there thinking this is the craziest thing I've ever experienced.
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And well, I told that story.
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And I didn't tell you how that story ended.
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And I always have people come up to me like, hey, whatever happened with that Santa Claus thing and what did what did the judge say and what happened?
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And there's a there's a reason that I don't finish that story.
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You want to know what it is?
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It's just not exciting.
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Really the end of a story is kind of a, "Eh." I'll tell you what happened.
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After everything was said and done, after all the accusations came, after I said, "Yes, I said there was no Santa Claus, no I did not buy the Passion of the Christ from a five-year-old foster kid." After all was said and done, the judge said, "This is ridiculous.
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There's no case here.
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I'm just throwing all this out." The end.
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Now do you see why I don't tell the rest of the story?
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That's what happened.
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You're like, "So why are you telling us today?" Well, here's the point.
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The reason I don't finish that story is because what happened is exactly what should happen.
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There's nothing shocking, exciting, funny.
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There's nothing about the end of that story that's even remarkable.
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You have a judge that heard all the evidence, realized how idiotic the whole thing was, and just threw it all out.
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We're going to get to a trial of Jesus where you have a judge that hears all of the idiotic evidence that should throw it all out, but doesn't.
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That's why the story of Jesus is so remarkable.
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In my story, you're like, "Yeah, that's exactly what should have happened, right, Bob?
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They should have just thrown it out.
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That was stupid." Same thing with Jesus.
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The judge should have just said, "This is idiotic.
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I'm not even entertaining this foolishness in the court." That's what Pilate should have said, but you're going to see that it ended up quite differently.
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We've seen already at Mark that Jesus was betrayed and Jesus was arrested and He was tried by the Jews.
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They took Him to Caiaphas' house and had this middle of the night trial that was a sham, and they decided, "We need to kill Him." Well, look at verse 1, Mark chapter 15, verse 1.
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It says, "And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council." What's going on there?
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This was actually the third Jewish trial.
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They wanted something to look official, is what was going on here, okay, because you weren't allowed to do the middle of the night trial.
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So they said, "Okay, as soon as day breaks, we're going to do this little, like, 'Oh, We convened and we had this little official thing and we put a stamp of authenticity on it.
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It was a mockery, is what it was.
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But they just wanted to look good.
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It says that they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.
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I shared with you before the reason that the Jews sent Jesus to Pilate was because Israel, being under Roman occupation at the time, Israel did not have the right to execute a criminal. Only Rome could execute. John chapter 18 and verse 31 says that explicitly. Like why did you take him to Pilate? Because we can't kill him, that's why. We don't have the authority to execute. So the Jews had to somehow take Jesus before Rome and convince them that he was worthy of being executed.
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That's why your Bible says that they took him to Pilate.
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So who was Pilate?
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Pilate was the Roman governor.
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And so much can be said about Pilate.
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I read so much about him this week and he's a fascinating character.
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I really just want to give you the overview.
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You can study him out for yourself.
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Here's the gist of it.
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was the commander of the military, he would oversee taxes coming in, and he would serve as judge. That's in a nutshell what this man did. He was a military leader, taxes, judge.
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Jews weren't really interested in all of those job titles. The only thing that the Jews were concerned about is we need an executioner. We don't care about the other stuff. We just needs somebody who can legally kill Jesus.
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You with me?
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It says, "And Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews?
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And he answered him, you have said so.
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And the chief priest accused him of many things.
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And Pilate again asked him, have you no answer to make?
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See how many charges they bring against you?" But Jesus made no further answer.
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So the pilot was amazed.
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"Now at the feast, he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.
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And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas." Do you know what his name means?
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His name means "son of a father." I'm not making that up.
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Son, Bar, son, Simon Bar-Jonah, Simon son of John, Bar, Abba, is dad, son of a dad.
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You're like, "Why was he named that?" The answer is, "I was not consulted when he was named." The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do as he usually did for them.
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And he answered them saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?
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For he had perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.
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I want to pause there.
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On your outline, you know, Pilate gets a bad rap for a lot of things, justifiably so.
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But there's one thing that's true about Pilate in every gospel.
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Pilate asked the best questions.
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I did a study on this one time.
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I just went through and wrote down, when you put all the gospels together, all the questions that Pilate asked, he asked the best questions.
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And really there's a couple here in Mark that I want to highlight today, because these These are questions that you have to ask and you have to answer for yourself.
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And the first question is this, "Is Jesus the King?" Is Jesus the King?
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That was... Now, they brought all these accusations, right?
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He's going to destroy a temple built with hands and make one, build one.
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We're not quite sure what he said, but he said something about destroying the temple.
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Remember that fiasco?
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Remember that?
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Crazy.
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He's saying this and he's claiming that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And they're like, "Oh yeah, he says he's the king." And Pilate's like, "Wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
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He says he's a king.
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In Caesar's kingdom, we get a guy saying he's a king." That was the thing that would have got Pilate's attention.
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Do you get that?
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That was the thing.
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"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
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You mean you Jews got a guy running around telling everybody that he's a king?" So that's what Pilate addresses.
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You see that in verse two, he says, "Are you the king of the Jews?
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This is what I need to know from you, Jewish guy.
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Are you saying that you are the king of the Jews?" I want you to think here, put yourself in the story.
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What do you think Jesus looked like at this point?
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Keep in mind he'd already been beaten up.
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Can you see him in your mind's eye?
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Puffy cheeks, blood.
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The Bible said that when he was praying in the garden, he sweat drops of blood.
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He would have had blood on him.
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He would have been sweaty.
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He would have been dirty from getting beat up and slapped and kicked around earlier.
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So you have this scene, you have here the Roman governor and you have this beat down young Jewish man in front of him.
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The pilots like, "You, you're the one that they're saying is a king?
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You?
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Are you the king of the Jews?" I love this exchange so much.
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I wish we could spend more time on it and even look at some of the other passages.
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It says in verse 3, "Jesus was accused of so many things by the chief priests." Pilate says, "Have you no answer to make?
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Look at all of this stuff they're accusing you of and you're not saying anything." Verse 5, "But Jesus made no further answer." Why is that?
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We talked about this before, didn't we?
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You see, Jesus didn't answer nonsense.
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When Pilate said, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered him, right?
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Did you catch that?
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Because that was a legitimate question.
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Yeah, that's a legitimate question.
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You have said so.
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With all these false accusations coming at Jesus from all sides, just like before, Jesus did not say a word.
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He didn't need to justify foolishness and like a sheep before its shearers, Jesus was silent.
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What do you think Pilate was expecting?
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I kind of put myself in the story of, you know, here's the governor and here's this beat down young Jewish man.
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And the Jews bring him before Pilate and say, "This man needs to die." They give this laundry list of accusations.
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What do you think Pilate would have expected Jesus to do?
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Probably lots of different things.
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For one, you think maybe Pilate thought that Jesus, maybe he was crazy?
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You think about that?
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The Jews brought me this guy that says he's a king, but look at him, he's dirty and beat up and sweaty and bloody.
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This guy must be insane.
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Or do you think that at this point, Pilate might have expected Jesus to beg?
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You know, the Jews throw this beat up man before Pilate and say, "He needs to die." Do you think Pilate was expecting Jesus to be like, "Oh, come on, man.
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Come on, man.
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Please, I'm begging you.
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These people are crazy.
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None of the stuff that they're accusing me of is even true.
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I didn't do anything, man.
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I don't deserve to die." I think that's what Pilate would have been expecting.
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So when all these things were coming at Jesus, he just stood there.
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What does your Bible say?
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Pilate was what?
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What does your Bible say?
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Verse five, Pilate was, shout it out, Pilate was amazed.
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All right, everybody make the face that you think Pontius Pilate made when Jesus didn't say anything.
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Go ahead, make that face.
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Yeah, right?
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Seriously, nothing?
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You don't have anything to say for yourself?
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Pilate was completely blown away by Jesus.
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So the question for you, the question that Pilate asked that you have to ask is this, is Jesus the King?
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Is Jesus the King?
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And on your outline you have options.
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And just very quickly, I can't say it any better than C.S. Lewis said it, and I'm just I'm paraphrasing here, but he said when you consider the person of Jesus Christ, he falls under one of three categories.
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He's either a liar or he's a lunatic or he's the Lord.
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Three L words.
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Those are your only options with Jesus.
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He's either a liar or he's a lunatic or he's the Lord.
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Very quickly I want to examine these.
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First of all, some people think, "Well, Jesus was a liar.
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He was a con artist." I have a couple problems with that theory.
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You'd probably do too.
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Number one, if Jesus was a con artist, he was the worst con artist of all time.
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He didn't have a house, didn't have much money.
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He traveled around his con with a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors and just like regular blue-collar Joes.
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And like, what was he getting out of the con?
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Like worst con artist ever.
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There's even something deeper than that.
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If Jesus were a con artist and he's playing this ruse out and getting everybody to buy what he's selling, and then all of a sudden his life was on the line, you think that's when the con stops?
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You think if he's playing a joke on everybody, and all of a sudden they say, "You're about to die because of this joke that you're playing on people." Well, you know what, man?
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I was just trying to make a few bucks.
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None of that stuff's true.
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I'm sorry.
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Nobody's going to push a joke to the point that they're laying down their life for it.
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If Jesus was a liar, that makes no sense.
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Because at the point of standing before Pilate, "You got me.
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You got me.
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I've already been beaten up.
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I've taken this a little too far.
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You got me.
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I don't want crucified because I'm a sham." So the whole liar thing doesn't fly.
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What about lunatic?
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What about lunatic?
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Have you ever met somebody genuinely mentally ill?
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I am not making fun because this is a serious thing.
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But I've got to tell you this story.
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Like years ago, I went to the hospital, to the psychiatric ward to visit this man.
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The story he told was humorous on the surface and you'll see that, but when you really stop and think about it, it was sad.
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But this guy was telling me that he's some kind of apostle.
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And he told me this long story about he's this apostle and he went to this bar where all of these apostles hang out.
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And he's sitting at the bar and he's drinking and he was spitting on the floor.
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And one of the apostles came up and was like, "Hey man, you can't just be spitting on the floor of my bar, man." And we got into this big fight.
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I'm not allowed back in that bar anymore.
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And that was the short version.
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He told me this story, probably took him an hour.
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The full version, looked me in the eye and believed every word that he said.
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He believed it.
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Sad.
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Very sad.
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Here's a man who is locked up for his own safety, who thinks he's some kind of directly commissioned by God kind of guy.
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You see some people want to put Jesus in that category.
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Like, "Yeah, that's Jesus.
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Jesus is just like that guy.
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He was crazy." Crazy people don't teach like Jesus taught, okay?
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Go back and look at the teachings of Jesus.
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Crazy people don't teach like Jesus taught.
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Crazy people don't manifest the type of miracles that Jesus did.
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Many people don't love people the way Jesus loved people.
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So the idea that Jesus was insane, that idea is insane.
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Say that Jesus was crazy, do you know anything about Jesus?
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Jesus manifests nothing of a person that has any kind of mental illness.
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So He's either a liar or a lunatic, or what was the third thing?
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Oh yeah, we've been kind of talking about that last fall.
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the Lord. And really, I think that's our only option. Look at His power, look at His words, look at His authority, look at the impact that He's had on this earth.
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Look at the impact that He's had.
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Like what? Like how about, I know two people that were crazy enough to let me give them a bath in front of a church of hundreds of people because they said, "I'm following this Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago.
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I believe he's still alive and at work today, and I believe he's alive and at work in me, and I'm going to publicly demonstrate that I'm dying to myself, and I'm allowing him to live through me.
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Do you think Jesus is still having an impact?
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When there's all these people from Northway coming alongside too, saying we are making the same declaration.
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When we see people that are building a training center to equip people to go out through spiritually dead Europe to proclaim the living Christ, has Jesus had an impact?
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So he's not a liar, and he's not a lunatic.
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When I take a look at the evidence, even right now, at what he's doing in the world, I say, he is the Lord.
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He is the Lord.
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So when Pilate says, "Is Jesus the King?" The question you have to ask yourself is, "Is He my King?" Is Jesus the King?
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Is that a fact that you acknowledge or is it a truth that you live by?
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Like, what do you mean by that?
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If we did a quick poll, I'm sure everybody in this room would say, "Yeah, Jesus is my King." Let me ask you, is Jesus King of every arena of your life?
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Write these down.
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First of all, write down the word "church." Is Jesus king of your church?
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Whether this is your church or you're here visiting from another church or whatever, is Jesus the king of your church?
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Is he?
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What about home?
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If I came and lived with you for a week, would I leave your house with a sense of, Jesus seems to be the king of that home.
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Nobody in that home really seems as concerned about their own rights or their own thing as they are about glorifying Jesus Christ in their home.
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Is Jesus king of your home?
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Do you have evidence of that?
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Is that obvious?
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Who is king in your home?
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What about work?
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What if I followed you to work?
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What if they're like, "Hey, I've got good news for you.
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You're being job shadowed." You're like, "That's great," by Jeff Miller.
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"That's not so great." Like if I job shadowed you, I'd be like, "You know what?
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It seems like when he goes to work, Jesus is still his King, even when he's punching the time clock, even when it's time to make the doughnuts.
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It's like he's making the doughnuts for Jesus, which is what the Bible tells you to do, by the way.
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You're not working for your boss, you're working for Jesus.
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Is there evidence that Jesus is King in your workplace?
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I'm not going to embarrass the guy, but I've heard it said of somebody sitting in this church, at his workplace, at his particular workstation.
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And they said, "It's like the chapel.
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He's always like playing Christian music and telling people about the Lord and inviting people to church." So I know if I went to that guy's work, like, "Yeah, Jesus is obviously king here." How's that working out for you where you work?
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Is Jesus king of your workplace?
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What about leisure time?
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What about leisure time?
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And when it's time to kick back and relax, is Jesus king of that?
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Like does that even really count?
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Yes, it counts.
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You glorify the Lord by the way that you spend your free time.
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You glorify the Lord by the way that you play baseball, by the way you get on your boat, by the way that you go on date night with your wife.
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Is Jesus king of those things?
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What about your finances?
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Is Jesus the king of your checkbook?
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Here's the truth, if God doesn't have your money, He doesn't have you.
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That's just the truth.
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Jesus made an objective statement, He says, "Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." Is Jesus the king of your checkbook?
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But is Jesus the king of your finances?
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We can say that safely, right?
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The pilot asked a great question, you need to ask it.
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Is Jesus the king?
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He's either a lunatic liar or Lord.
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And if He's the Lord, is He your Lord?
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And if He's your Lord, is it obvious He's your Lord?
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Second question, let's pick up in verse 11.
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Verse 11 says, "But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Him released for them, Barabbas instead.
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And Pilate again said to them, 'Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews.
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And they cried out again, "Crucify Him!" And Pilate said to them, "Why?
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What evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify Him!" So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released from the Ember Abyss, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
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And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is the governor's headquarters, and they called together the whole battalion.
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And they clothed him with a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him.
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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.
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When they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.
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And they let him out to crucify him.
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The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders finally can sit back and say, "It took some doing, but mission accomplished. Not knowing that God in heaven at the same time was saying mission is being accomplished.
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The second question you have to ask for yourself is a question that Pilate asked in verse 12.
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We said that he's the Lord, right? He's the King. Is he the King? Is Jesus the King? Here's You see that?
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Pilate scared to death of a riot breaking out.
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Why?
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Because at this point in Pilate's career, history tells us there were already two or three Jewish insurrections because of him.
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Pilate was already in a little bit of hot water with the boss, so to speak.
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One of them was because Pilate wanted to move the army's headquarters from Caesarea to Jerusalem.
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Okay, so the army came into Jerusalem, but they all had Caesar's image on their shields, and the Jews were like, "That's idolatry, having Caesar's image." And the Jews had this big public protest, and Pilate surrounded them with the army.
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And Pilate was like, "If you guys don't knock it off, we will slaughter you where you stand." And these Jews were like, "Bring it." And Pilate was like, "Yeah, I was thinking Jerusalem really isn't a great place for my army." So Pilate backed off.
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You see, there were a few instances where Pilate caused some problems, caused some problems with his leadership, wasn't taking care of business in the appropriate way.
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So now all of a sudden, here's Jesus standing before him, and here's this crowd screaming, and there are these Jews that don't like him.
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So Pilate says, "What shall I do with this man that you call the King of the Jews?
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What should I do with him?" You have to ask that question for yourself to say, "What should I do with Jesus?" Verse 15 says, "Pilate just wanted to satisfy the crowd." But when you ask yourself, "What shall I do with Jesus?" Understand that the Bible says that your eternity hinges on how you answer that question.
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You have options.
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he's done. You have options. What shall I do with Jesus? You can do what the chief priest did with Jesus. Jesus is too much of an intrusion. I'm afraid that if Jesus comes into my temple, he's going to drive some things out. He's going to turn some tables over. And guess what? He will. When Jesus shows up, he turned some tables over in your life.
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And for some people, they say, like the chief priests, what What shall I do with Jesus?
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I have to stand against Him.
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I have to stand against Him.
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You can do what Pilate did and understand that Pilate was a wicked guy.
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There's no doubt about that.
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Read the history.
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He was a wicked man.
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Jesus reminded us in Luke 13 that Pilate slaughtered a bunch of Jews in the temple, so much so that their blood mixed with the blood of the animal sacrifices.
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Can you imagine?
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That was the kind of guy Pilate was.
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But honestly, I don't believe Pilate had any interest in Jesus at all.
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I just mean I don't think Pilate cared.
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For as evil as he was, here Jesus was standing before him, I don't think Pilate really cared at all.
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No personal interest.
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And in Pilate's mind, he was thinking, "Let's just make Jesus a non-issue." And there are some people, even sitting here, that ultimately that's what you want from Jesus.
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I don't want Him to be an issue in my life.
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Okay?
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I don't hate Jesus.
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But He's not my King.
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Jesus is just a non-issue for me.
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Yeah, I go to church because my family expects me to, or because I have friends there, or whatever, but...
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I mean, come on.
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I don't hate Jesus, but I'm not like, fired up about Him. That was Pilate.
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Or you could do, what shall I do with Jesus?
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You have options. You can do what the crowd did.
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You can do what the crowd did.
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Look again at verse 11.
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It says, "The chief priest stirred up the crowd." This is how these same people that were cheering for Jesus during the triumphal entry are now screaming, "Crucify Him!" You know, these people that already tried Jesus, they were stirring up the crowd.
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And you can see how this was happening as these Jews were spreading out through the crowd and just like grabbing people, you know, like, hey, we can't have Jesus running around and they're gonna release somebody.
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We gotta get them to release Barabbas.
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Barabbas is way safer than Jesus.
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Come on, let's go.
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And they're just running around getting people on their side, like, hey, you know, let's talk Pilate into releasing Barabbas.
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And we gotta get rid of Jesus.
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Jesus isn't good for our religion.
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He's not good for our country.
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ultimately is gonna cause, and they're just running around getting all of these people like, "Yeah, you know what?
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I'm with you on that.
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Yeah, you know what?
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You're right.
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Yeah, we shouldn't have Jesus running around.
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We can't have a guy like that running around.
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And yeah, you know what?
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We shouldn't have somebody running around saying that he's God." And they got the crowd completely on their side.
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So like the crowd, "What shall I do with Jesus?" You can be fickle.
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The crowd just decided to go with somebody else's opinion.
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Just be fickle.
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Cheer for them on the "Triumph of the Holy Trinity" cry out for His crucifixion on Friday.
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How did that happen?
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That happens all the time.
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That happens all the time.
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There are people in church with their hands raised worshiping like, "We want Jesus!
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Jesus, live in me!" Come Monday, I don't really want Jesus to be my Lord.
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I don't really want Jesus to rule over me.
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"Well dude, you just sang about it yesterday." Well, yeah, that was like so yesterday.
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When it comes to affecting things in my life through the week, life change stuff, that's when we start to cry.
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Barabbas. You want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?
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Did you see what it said about Barabbas? He was with the people who'd committed murder in the insurrection.
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Pilate says, "Do you want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?" Barabbas!
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Do you want the holy, sinless Son of God? Or this robber/murderer/rebel Barabbas?
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Barabbas!
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Let me ask you, what did Barabbas do for any of them? Think about that. What did Barabbas do for any of them? Who in the crowd could stand up and say, "I have personally benefited from the ministry of Barabbas.
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Who could say that?
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This guy was a criminal.
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This guy was a murderer.
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And this crowd says, that's the guy we want.
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Not this guy that teaches love.
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Not this guy that heals people.
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Not this guy that seems to genuinely care about people.
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We'll take the guy that'll murder someone over the guy that would heal someone.
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What did Barabbas ever do for them?
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Understand when we get to this passage today, we have to ask ourselves, "What shall I do with Jesus?" Here's the thing, you have the same choice that the crowd did.
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You want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?
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Which one do you want?
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Because if you're saying, "I want Jesus, I'd rather have Jesus, I'd rather you release Jesus, you're saying what I want is God.
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I want God's best.
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I want God's best for me.
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But understand when you're saying, "I'd rather have Barabbas," you're saying exactly what the crowd is saying is, "I'd rather have anything but Jesus." Because I promise you, if there was somebody worse in prison that was offered to them, they would have taken that guy.
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Anybody but Jesus.
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Anybody but Jesus.
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Please hear me.
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Because you're like, oh, that's so not me.
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I hear what you're saying, Pastor Jeff, but I guarantee you if I was in the crowd that day, I would have been cheering for Jesus to be released.
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Well, hang on a second.
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Because practically, practically, that's not always true.
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Because saying that you want Barabbas The same as saying, "I prefer my sin over Jesus." Do you get that?
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I'm going to say that again.
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Saying that you want Barabbas is saying that you want your sin over you want Jesus.
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And here's the thing, everybody in this room at times wishes that they had Barabbas released instead of Jesus.
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Would you rather God's righteousness be displayed in your life?
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Or would you rather have your sin?
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And so many times, church, we say, I would rather have my sin than have God's righteousness released.
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I'd rather have my sin.
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And when we do that, we're right with the crowd saying give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus.
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I would rather have my sin - and just like I asked you, what did Barabbas do for this crowd?
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What did he do for anybody in the crowd?
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I want to ask you this morning, church, what has your sin done for you?
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What benefit has your sin brought in your life that you would choose your sin over choosing the righteousness of God.
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You would choose your sin over choosing obedience to the Word of God.
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What has sin done for you that has brought that appeal?
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Think of your addiction.
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We live in an addicted area, do you know that?
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For people with addiction, it would rather choose their addiction over choosing worshiping the real God, what benefit has your addiction brought you?
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Physical harm?
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It's cost you a lot of money.
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It's caused you to tell a lot of lies.
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It's broken a lot of relationships.
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And it's enslaved you to some sort of chemical substance.
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That's what your addiction has brought you.
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And that's what you would choose over Jesus.
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What about unforgiveness?
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There are people here that are holding grudges right now.
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Refusing to forgive.
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How has that helped you?
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I want you to list all of the benefits that your unforgiveness has brought you.
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Things like bitterness.
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Things like resentment.
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Things like relationship tension.
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There are people here that struggle with looking at sensual images and videos on the internet.
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What benefit has that brought you?
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What benefit has that brought you that that's the Barabbas you'd rather release versus Jesus you'd rather release into your life?
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What benefit has the pornography brought you?
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Guilt, shame, depression, inability to see sexuality for what God intended it to be.
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That's what you get from pornography.
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And that's the Barabbas that many people choose.
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What about your stuff, your possessions, your money?
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It's not wrong to have stuff, okay?
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It's not wrong to have stuff.
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We all have stuff, right?
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Everybody has stuff.
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It's not wrong to have stuff.
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It's wrong when stuff has you.
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And when stuff becomes your drive, when you care more about the barabbas of stuff than the righteousness of Jesus, let me ask you, has your stuff ever satisfied you?
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Has your stuff ever satisfied you?
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Have you ever gotten something that you're like, "Oh man, I am so good now.
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I have everything that I need.
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I am perfectly content.
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And that is nobody's testimony.
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For a lot of people, that's the Barabbas they'd rather have than releasing Jesus.
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Today, two thousand years later, the choice is put before you as it was before this crowd.
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You want Jesus?
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Or do you want Barabbas?
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Because the custom says you can only have one.
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And the spiritual truth of God's Word is the same.
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You can only have one.
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You're a slave to one or the other.
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So would you rather have Jesus or would you rather have Barabbas?
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I told you what Barabbas offered you, which is nothing but pain.
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What does Jesus offer you?
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Jesus offers you forgiveness of sin.
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Jesus says I'm willing to take your guilt and your shame of your sin and eradicate it.
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That's what Jesus offers.
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Jesus offers eternal life.
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Every one of us are just passing through the earth and you're heading somewhere for eternity.
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Jesus offers a place in glory with Him for eternity.
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Jesus offers strength.
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The times in our lives that we think we can't make one more step, He's there offering the strength to carry us through.
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Jesus offers us peace.
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When the world is falling to pieces around us, a stand and say I know my God is in control. That's peace. Jesus offers us joy.
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Say I don't need to be depressed or discouraged or despondent because of my condition or the condition of those around me. I know that my best days are ahead because Jesus offers me joy. And knowing the hope of his promise then gives me joy now knowing that things are going to be like this forever. He gives me joy.
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Jesus gives me hope. As I said, this is not all there is. God has something so much better waiting for us. And Jesus says, "I'm giving you hope." So when you look at what Jesus offers and you look at what Barabbas and Sid offer in your life, the question is, which What do you want?
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Would you like Jesus?
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Or would you like Barabbas?
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Father in Heaven, we stand with the crowd today.
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And we stand with Pilate today, asking his question, saying, what should I do with Jesus?
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Would I rather have Jesus?
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Or would I rather have Barabbas?
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Would I rather have the righteousness of God?
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Or would I rather have sin?
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And all of the destructive consequences of sin?
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Father, I pray that today is a new day.
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That there are some people here that are struggling with some things.
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Maybe their attitudes. Maybe their actions.
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Maybe their words.
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Maybe their relationships. Whatever it is.
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I pray God, in the name of Jesus, that today would be a new day.
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That You would bring things to the light to come to the light, that you would grant repentance, and that the verdict is much different in our hearts than was different in the text that we read today. Instead of Barabbas being the one that is released and received, that we open ourselves up to the gracious invitation that you've given us in Jesus Christ. In His name that we pray, Amen.
