Jesus Was Wrong!

(Started the Service with the first three verses of “Were you there when they crucified my Lord”. Did it very reflective, had the scripture read Luke 23:44-49 then preached the message. After the sermon went into high power resurrection songs, ie My Redeemer lives. I was afraid I’d drop dead half way through the message and nobody would read the rest of my sermon and I’d be buried outside the gates as a heretic.)

Jesus was wrong! That’s right on that Good Friday so many years ago Christ was proven wrong. He had fought the good fight but he had lost. In the eyes of the world, in the eyes of His followers and in the eyes of his enemies Jesus Christ the carpenter from Nazareth had been proven wrong.

Everything he said about being God, everything he had said about his Kingdom, everything He had said about His power. Every statement He ever uttered, every promise He ever made, everything had been shown to be a lie because Jesus was wrong.

If Jesus had lived it would have been different, but he died and so He was wrong, dead wrong.

The Jewish Leaders were Right. It was Jesus who was marching out of step, not them. He was a liberal, trouble making activist. I mean, think about it, things had been happening the same way in Israel for thousands of years. What right did this young upstart preacher have to come in and try to change things all around?

He wasn’t a Rabbi, he wasn’t a Levite, he wasn’t a scribe or a Pharisee. He was just a carpenter, he was a newcomer to Jerusalem, he was only thirty three years old and he was wrong.

So why should they change? After all it was the Sadducees who were the lawmakers, not Jesus. He just didn’t understand how things were done. What right did he have to tell them as he did in Matthew 22:29 Jesus replied, “Your problem is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. Well they had shown him, because they were right and he on the other hand was wrong.

How dare he call them vipers, how dare he call them fools, how dare he call them hypocrites. Who did he think he was anyway? And then he had the utter gall to claim to be the equal to Jehovah God. Well they were right and he was wrong, dead wrong!

Pilate was Right He was right because he was smart. Pilate knew what he was doing, he was every inch a politician. He saw trouble coming and he already had too much trouble in Jerusalem. There Jews were on the brink of revolt. Perhaps it had happened when he had put the images of Caesar on the flag standards in direct defiance of the Jewish law. Maybe he was wrong that time, or perhaps it was when he financed the municipal water supply with money he had seized from the temple treasury, he may have been wrong that time too.

I mean Pilate had enough trouble; he didn’t need all the problems that this young Nazarene carpenter represented. Pilate had the authority of the Roman Empire behind him; at the snap of his fingers he could have levelled Jerusalem. And this young peasant had the nerve to stand in front of him and say (John 19:11 Then Jesus said,) “You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above.” Oh yeah, right, well Pilate proved him wrong.

Pilate feared the trouble that the Jews could raise with his superiors but then again there were his superstitions about this one who called himself God.

What should he do, please the Jews or set this harmless preacher free? So he crucified him, but hey it worked out for the best. Pilate was right and Jesus was wrong, dead wrong.

Barabbas was Right According to custom each year at the Passover celebration the Roman Governor would set one prisoner free. And so Pilate asked the crowd, “Should I release Jesus the Christ or Barabbas the murderer?” It would have been so easy for Pilate to have released Christ if the Crowd had of asked him to. But no, the crowd yelled, “Free Barabbas, crucify Jesus, free Barabbas, crucify Jesus.” And he so he did.

So you see Barabbas was right and Jesus was wrong.

But who was this Barabbas? Well his name was probably Bar Rabbis which in the Greek means Son of the Rabbi. I’m sure some people are thinking; typical preacher’s kid right? Maybe his dad was one of the leaders who called for the death of Jesus. We do know that Barabbas was one of the Zealots, those who wanted to rid Israel of Rome. And the Zealots didn’t care what it took, murder, robbery, terrorism.