The Sign of Decision
Matthew 27:20-22 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. {21} “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor. “Barabbas,” they answered. {22} “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!”
In the name of Jesus… As we go through life we find that there are many difficult lessons we must learn. There are the lessons of sorrow, pain, joy, discipline, patience, waiting on God to work out His purposes in our lives. Perhaps no lesson is more difficult than the slowly growing awareness of the fact that God does not always work at the same speed, not to mention that He seldom if ever works when and how we want Him to work.
Sometimes for years and for centuries it seems that nothing much happens. Life is smooth, quiet, and uneventful. There is a deceptive stillness about life and time which can easily lull us into a false sense of security. And then suddenly things begin to move; the God of life and history and redemption swings into visible and obvious action. This is exactly what happened on that first Good — and evil — Friday.
Many years ago an instructor in English asked his students: “What is the greatest single dramatic scene in all the world’s literature?” The members of the class immediately offered some suggestions. There were several mentions of scenes from classic plays. One student offered up a scene from the Bible itself in the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, a scene between our Lord and the woman caught in adultery.
Finally the instructor said: “The greatest dramatic scenes in the entire world’s literature are those which took place between six and nine o’clock on Good Friday morning.” It is hard to argue against that point. Everything thinkable and unthinkable was going on during those hours. Every human passion was there: hate, anger, fear, love, pride, devotion. All the stuff of high drama was there: two trials, one murder, one suicide.
It is a very curious drama too, held together only by the silent, mysterious figure of the leading character, Jesus, who speaks no more than one hundred words but who dominates the story as though He had rehearsed it from eternity. Here was God really moving fast, and when He moves, life and history and men move with Him.
There is a great and final turning point in this drama; there is a point of no return. It is the moment when it becomes finally clear that the drama can end in only one way. This is the final slamming of the door! It is the moment which takes us out of our seats as spectators and makes us participants in the drama.
Let us look more closely at the scene before us. From the very beginning of the drama the heart of the action lies in the decision made by those who come face to face with the silent figure of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To their dismay they find that they cannot remain neutral; they must make up their minds about Him. The hour of decision had come, and so one by one, with a weird consistency, they made up their minds about what they were going to do with their God on a quiet morning in spring.
Judas decided — and committed suicide. Peter decided — and stumbled off the stage with blinding tears in his eyes. Annas and Caiaphas decided — and get a few more years of shoddy, uneasy power. The disciples decided – and fled into the night. The stage empties faster and faster until now, at the turning point, there are only four characters left: a Roman, a criminal, a faceless mob, and the silent, strange, leading figure of Christ.
Curiously enough, the one man who had the hardest time making up his mind about Christ was not one of the disciples, but Pontius Pilate. Something seemed to hold him back. He had a sense of fairness, of Roman justice, and a contempt for these quarreling people. On the other hand, he was a twentieth century man. He had power, and he means to keep it. And so he twisted and turned like the classic politician that he was. He spoke in the vain hope that he might find some way to get off the hook, to avoid a decision, to discover some way out of the dilemma. He would have liked to find some way of getting rid of his God standing there in the morning sunlight.
Finally in his desperation he hit upon a seemingly brilliant idea. He did not want to decide; he would let someone else do it. Let the people decide! He resolved to be democratic about the situation and gave them a choice between good and evil, between God and man, between Jesus and Barabbas. He appealed to the masses. Surely they would decide the right way! It has been said that the voice of the people is the voice of God. It has been said that many minds are better than one. Is there not something good, something fundamentally sound in the common man which inevitably and invariably rises to the challenge of goodness?
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We can almost see his mind at work. Surely the people would recognize the thorn-crowned Sufferer as one of their own, their Friend, their Teacher, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. Surely they would prefer Him to a slimy murderer, a wild-eyed revolutionary, one of the anonymous criminals who were forever cluttering up the Roman jails. Surely this was an easy choice for the people! It was all so very clear, so very simple!
Pilate asked his question: “Whom do you want me to release to you?” There was a roar from the crowd — and the noise of it was like the crack of doom in Pilate’s ear: “Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!” The people had spoken. The election was over. The votes were in. The votes were counted, in earth and heaven and hell, finally and forever.
With this moment the scene became fearfully modern. Call this what you will – spiritual blindness, mob rule, moral insanity. We may refer to our psychology and sociology books in order to explain what happened. But we must never forget that this was a cross-section of our common humanity. These were people just like you and me. They were men and women from the homes, the shops, and the markets of Jerusalem. Here were good people, religious people — people who would not think of killing an animal on Saturday, but who are ready to kill their God on Friday.
All this makes this scene very personal in its meaning for every one of us. Each of us in his own way is a student of human nature. We must learn to get along with others. We want to know why people act as they do. Here in this text is one of the great laboratories for such a study. Just why did the mob yell: “Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!“? Surely it was not because they hated Jesus personally. Their leaders may have hated Him, but not the people themselves. He had come, as He had told them, to bring the Gospel to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to tell captive souls that they were free, to open the eyes of the blind, to heal those that had been hurt and broken by life. Surely you can’t hate anyone for that!
No, we must understand clearly that there was something hopeless here, something deep and dark and demonic, something which you and I must face honestly if we are ever to understand human nature, life, and history. Here was something awful to see but necessary to understand.
The people made their decision and cried “Barabbas,” the world today cries “Barabbas,” we cry “Barabbas,” because they, the world, and we are under the deep, dark, demonic compulsion of sin.
And there it is, as clear and sharp as the morning sun. What was behind that cry on that first Good Friday morning is still behind it today. Sin! Cruelty, blasphemy, and blind hate – the whole nine yards. Every wrong appetite, every evil desire, every unnamed vice to the very last and the lowest of them all. Every sin of the world and in the world was there that morning. The sin of the past and the future, today’s sin and yesterday’s sin — this was behind the choice of the people. What was in the air that spring morning and what is in the air in our own world is dark and evil. God did not create a world of sin. This is our own doing. We can never blame anyone else for that.
But here, then, the final, great eternal miracle happened again. You stand up free and forgiven because one day there was a cross and your sin entered into the life and heart of the eternal Son of God. It was shared by God. It was buried in God. And because this great decision was made by God, you can leave this church this evening heads up, free and forgiven.
We can live only when we know that God has mended the broken places and that we are strong and free where He has come. We are free and forgiven by the great decision which He has made by the might and measure of the glory of the Cross.
God has made His decision. He decided to crush His own Son in your place. You are the guilty-as-sin Barabbas, and yet you go free. Forgiven. Cleansed. Made whole.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
