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SLIDEGrace Happens - 4
December 2, 2012
His jail cell was small, it contained only one small window. The view from his window took his breath away. He only had to look one time for the air to get sucked out of his gut. He turned his back to the window and slid down the wall and sat in the dirt. He didn’t say anything. There was nobody to talk to, nobody to brag to, there was nothing to say. He was falling apart. For a man who wasn’t afraid of anything . . . he was now scared spitless. The image in his mind was causing his hands to shake uncontrollably.
What caused his fear? What did he see? He saw the hill. He saw the place of the crosses – there were 3 crosses and one would have his name on it.
About a 1/4 mile away there was a group of men. With every passing second, this group was growing in size. They weren’t happy and were voicing their disapproval to anyone who would listen. Many of them had been up most of the night; they were tired and angry. They were looking at Roman governor in charge
SLIDE13 Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, 14 and said to them, “You brought me this Man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion.
SLIDEI have examined Him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against Him.
SLIDE 15 Neither has Herod, for he sent Him back to us; as you can see, He has done nothing to deserve death. 16 Therefore, I will punish Him and then release Him.”
SLIDE18 With one voice they cried out, “Away with this Man! Release Barabbas to us!” 19 (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)
That last sentence explains the life of Barabbas – a rebel and a murderer. He was a trouble maker and a law breaker. What was Pilate supposed to do? You don’t extend grace and freedom to a murderer. But the crowd thinks so. Instead, the crowd wants the innocent man to be killed. But Pilate responds, ‘He’s not guilty. He has done nothing to deserve death.’
Maybe Jesus is guilty of stirring up the crowd, of misapplication of scripture, or just giving a bad look to the wrong person. Pilate doesn’t know, and frankly doesn’t care. He doesn’t know who Jesus is. Maybe Jesus deserves a lecture and a warning. Maybe He deserves a beating; but He doesn’t deserve death. Pilate had nothing to gain by releasing Jesus. He even made 4 attempts to release Jesus. He told the Jews ~
They shouldSLIDE settle the matter (John 18:28-31)
He referred the issue to Herod (Luke 23:4-7)
He wanted the Jews to accept Jesus as the prisoner released at Passover (Mark 15:6-10)
He offered a compromise - scourging instead of the cross (Luke 23:22)
SLIDEEven in Matthew 27, Pilate’s wife gets into the discussion and tells Pilate “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.” Pilate wants to release Jesus, saying, “I find no fault in Him at all” - John 18:38.
SLIDEHas anybody ever said that about you? With that statement by Pilate, he speaks a very important and deep theological truth. He said what Paul would later say in 2 Corinthians 5:21 ~ God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. The apostle John, echoed the same statement, saying And in Him is no sin. - 1 John 3:5
SLIDEIt’s an amazing theological statement! You see, it’s not that Jesus couldn’t sin, but He chose not to sin. He could have broken bread with the devil in the desert; or disobeyed the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. He could have sinned; He was tempted to sin. The writer of Hebrews tells us, 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — YET WAS WITHOUT SIN. (Hebrews 4:15)
Can you imagine, He never once broke the laws of Rome, and He never violated the laws of God? Can you imagine someone leading a life that had no fault? In Proverbs 20:9, we read, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin?’” Who can say that? Not a single one of us.
Remember when we were in school and a teacher would make a mark in their book when you did something wrong? Maybe you weren’t listening, or sleeping in the class, or spit ball fights, passing notes, too much flirting or too much talking. Whatever it was, they would make a tick mark next to your name. At the end of the semester they would be calculated into your grade. Sometimes, it might not look all too good. Know what I mean?
SLIDENow, what if God kept a book like this. You wonder what it might look like? What if in the middle of His class we were doing our thing, instead of following His thing? What if we confused His purpose with our purpose? What if we used His class for our purpose.
His plan is to prepare for Himself a people who will love Him and serve Him; and will love one another and serve one another, giving Him the glory and honor. We would have amazing fellowship if we really agreed to His purpose and plan.
Unfortunately, we don’t agree with His purpose all of the time. All of us, at times, are guilty of rebellion. We use God’s classroom for our own purposes. Look at the way we behave. We think the world is all about us, and nothing about God. We live like there really is no tomorrow, that this life is all there is. So, does God notice the way we think and act? Does God make marks of all the times we’re rebellious and insolent and plainly . . . sinful?
When God makes clear to me what the purpose of my life is, and I fail at it, does God make tick marks on my record sheet? When I tell that white lie; when I use my gifts for personal gain; when I inappropriately use sarcasm to hurt someone; when I get lazy; when I have thoughts that aren’t so good. And this is just since I woke up!
SLIDEDoes God notice? This is an important question. How does your page look? If there’s a page with your name on it, and there’s a mark for every time you’ve messed up, what does your page look like?
Most people in our culture tend to view God as that old grandfatherly type guy, with a long beard, sitting in his rocking chair, wearing glasses because he can’t see well, using a hearing aid because he can’t hear well and taking popping some pills so he can remember better. That’s the view the world has of God. He’s a kind, old, forgetful dude!
Someday, God will look over our rap sheet, and God will just shake his head and smile and say, “Oh, boys will be boys. Things happen! It’s ok.” We’ll just sweep it under the rug. It sounds good, but to believe that you need to take a scissors to your Bible and cut out a lot of pages.
SLIDEYou see, if we do this and believe this, then we take away that fact that God is a just God, who desires there to be justice. A just God must acknowledge and punish rebellion and crime. God, who is holy, cannot stand rebellion! When we look at the Bible we see passages like ~ Each of us will give an account of himself to God - Romans 14:12. We see this in Revelation 20:12 ~ The dead were judged by what they had done, which was written in the books.
Someday we will answer for what we’ve done. Each of us will give an account before God. We would like to ask for an eraser, so that all of our marks could be taken off the board. We’d like to bargain and plead with God to get rid of our tick marks, but God has too much character to just let bygones be bygones. Do we really want God to lower His standards, so that anything goes? Do we want a heaven where the standards have been lowered? Where sin has been dismissed, and evil has been swept under the rug?
While this might sound good on paper and at times we might want this from God, because of some of the things we’ve done, we know this isn’t God. We wouldn’t want that type of God. A god who turns a blind eye and deaf ear to all we say and do.
We want a God who’s passionate, all powerful, filled with love and grace and intimately involved in our lives, as scary as that might be. We can’t have a god who will ignore our sins, yet a god who will bring healing when we’re hurting. That’s not a god, that’s wishful thinking.
If we can admit that God is going to punish sin, and our page has more marks on it than we can count, then where does that leave us? This leads us back to Barabbas.
Because, just like Barabbas, we deserve to die. Just like Barabbas we’ve rebelled against the king. We’ve hurt people and ignored the laws of God. We find ourselves imprisoned as well. Not in a literal jail, but in unforgiveness, guilt, fear, anger. We find ourselves against the wall, waiting, listening for the footsteps of the executioner.
And we hear him come, he unlocks the door to our jail cell. It’s over, we don’t need to look up, because we know what he’s going to say. We know the outcome of the story. But then the executioner says something we never thought we’d hear ~ “You’re free to go. Jesus took your place. They’re punishing Jesus instead of you.”
You let it soak in, but you don’t wait more than a few seconds. Before you know it, you’re outside in the bright sunshine, your eyes are adjusting to the sun. You’re trying to understand what just happened.
SLIDEPaul tells us, Grace happened! 24 God in His gracious kindness, declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus - who has freed us by taking away our sins.
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25 For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed His blood, sacrificing His life for us. Romans 3:24-25
Isn’t that an amazing statement about God, for us?! Who did this? Who initiated this? Not you and I! It was God who SENT Jesus to free us, by taking away our sins. God saw our rebellion and sent His Son to satisfy His anger against us. This was God’s plan before the creation of you and I. It was God’s plan before the creation of Adam and Eve. God knew this was going to happen so He had this plan.
SLIDESo, 19 He paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless lamb of God.
SLIDE20 God chose Him for this purpose long before the world began, but now in these final days He was sent to the earth for all to see. And He did this for you. 1 Peter 1:19-20
Before there was a sinner, there was a Savior. Before there was a disease, there was a remedy. Before there was a Barabbas who needed a substitute, there was a substitute who was ready to take his place. That substitute was Jesus.
What did Jesus do? He took away our sins. He didn’t sweep them under the rug. He didn’t pretend they never happened. He made a public display of our sins. He took our sins to the cross. He not only suffered an excruciating death, but He also received the punishment of God. The anger and wrath of God was poured out upon His Son, so that it would never be poured out upon His other children, you and I.
He took that record book that has all of your marks, and He crossed out your name, and He put in the name of His Son . . . Jesus. And if He had only done that, we could call that grace, but He has promised to give us grace upon grace, and He turned the page to the one page in the book which bore no marks whatsoever . . . and you know what He did?
SLIDEHe marked through that name and He wrote yours!
This means that if you’re in Christ, when heaven sees you, heaven sees Jesus. Because you’ve been credited, you’ve received in your account, the perfect life of Christ, that you didn’t lead or deserve. And Jesus received the rebellious lives that we’ve lived.
It’s the great exchange. . . He became what we were . . . so that we can become who He is.
We don’t know whatever happened to Barabbas. We don’t know how he responded when he learned that Jesus would die in his place. Maybe nothing happened in him and his pride got the best of him and he thought, good for him, good for me.
Maybe he was so shame filled that he cowered in the corner and watched and flet incredible shame, but never went a step further.
He could have stood up and said, ‘I don’t deserve this, but thanks be to God for the indescribable gift of Jesus was the true Son of God.
I would like us to be the Barabbas who stood up in the jail cell and steps out into the world and follow Jesus all the way to the cross. I want us to stand on the hill of calvary, along with Jesus.
