There was a man in Palestine who appeared on history’s scene just briefly, then vanished again. We know very little about him, except that he was arrested by Roman authorities for insurrection (which is rebellion against a government authority), and murder. Now it is probably fairly safe to assume that the murder he was charged with was the killing of a Roman soldier during his act of revolt. So some would say that this was not murder, but an act of war. A courageous rebellion against the foreign invader that had oppressed his people and his nation.
Whether we condemn or justify his actions however, he was found by the governing authorities to be guilty , and he was sentenced to die. Since this was first century Palestine, occupied by the Romans and therefore under Roman law, his manner of death was to be crucifixion.
The interesting thing, and truly the only reason we know his name at all, is that Barabbas (name meaning “son of the father”) was scheduled to die on the same day that Jesus of Nazareth was arrested and tried and condemned to death; and when the paths of Barabbas, son of the father and Jesus Christ, Son of the Father crossed, the changes that took place in the life of Barabbas painted a picture of all mankind under sin and the sentence of death, and provided a valid and vital message for all who would come after to learn from.
Today I want to talk to you about the Gospel, according to Barabbas.
First please read Matthew 27:15-26
As I said a minute ago, Barabbas becomes for us a type of all mankind under condemnation of sin. So let’s approach his story this way today:
BARABBAS GUILTY, BARABBAS UNDER THE SENTENCE OF DEATH, BARABBAS SUBSTITUTED and BARABBAS MADE NEW
BARABBAS GUILTY
I’ll never forget David F. When I was a police officer, David F was one of the most confusing characters I ever ran across, yet this young man taught me some valuable lessons about human nature.
David F was either the best liar I’ve ever met, or he was so entirely self-deceived that even he believed his lies which gave him the ability to plead his own case so convincingly.
The first time I encountered him, it was as a teenager, in his torn up bedroom. His parents had sent him to his room for some domestic infraction, and he proceeded to tear that room to pieces, so they called the police. When I talked with David he denied having committed the initial infraction, he denied tearing up his room (this while sitting on his bed between shattered guitar and smashed tennis racket), and he denied that he had been involved in any confrontation with his parents whatsoever. So the only avenue open to me, was to warn him to settle down and obey his parents, and leave the house.
As the next several years ticked on, I arrested David for theft, for auto burglary, and on a warrant for failure to appear in court. Each time I came in contact with Mr. F his lies were so convincing that if I hadn’t the evidence sitting right there in front of me...AND in front of him...I might have believed in his innocence myself.
The last contact I had with this boy, was after he and two friends stole a car, then drove it off a mountain road, totaling the car and requiring hospitalization for the three of them. When I went to see him at the emergency room, while the deep cuts on his head were being stitched, he, with wide-eyed innocence, denied any involvement in the theft of the vehicle, or even having been in it. He couldn’t explain his injuries.
While there are not many people who are such polished and accomplished liars, the vast majority of mankind without Christ is as deeply in denial concerning their guilt before God, as David F was concerning his crimes.
Romans 1:18 says that they ‘suppress the truth in unrighteousness’. In that particular context, they are suppressing the general knowledge of the existence of God within them. But the same sin nature that suppresses that truth, also suppresses the truth of their own guilt before a holy God.
I John 1:8 says “if we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us”.
But although men deny their guilt, their guilt remains, nonetheless.
To God, man’s denial of sin is as ridiculous as Mr. F’s denials were to me. God can see the blackness of our sin. God can see our sin like leper’s spots, eating us away and keeping us spiritually dead. And while He looks on our pathetic little cancer-ridden souls, writhing in the agony of demonic influence, with wide-eyed innocence we insist that everything is A-OK, and deceive no one but ourselves.
Let’s take another brief look at Barabbas’ circumstances here. As I said above, he had been arrested for insurrection and murder.
Now in a day ~ this day in which we live ~ of situational ethics and the philosophy that the ends justify the means, someone might come to the defense of Barabbas and say, “He was a patriot! The Romans were the occupying oppressors, and Barabbas and his friends were like the French Maquis ~ the underground resistance ~ of World War II! If he killed a soldier during an act of rebellion against this evil enemy, then he was not a criminal, but a zealot!” That’s the way he is portrayed by Hollywood.
But we are given more information than what we see in Matthew 27. John, who was present at the mock trials and the scourging and finally the crucifixion of his Lord, and as one who wrote his gospel independently of the other three gospels, tells us that Barabbas was a robber.
I looked the word up in my Greek dictionary. Do you know what it means?
“Robber”.
That serves to take away all the romance, doesn’t it? He may have been involved in a rebellion against an oppressive government, and for all we know, the death he was accused of may have been an accident. Maybe.
But he was a robber. John doesn’t romanticize; he doesn’t try to make it look like the death of Jesus saved an innocent man ~ a godly man ~ a patriot.
You know, our heroes are usually the ones who sacrifice themselves for the innocent.
The school bus driver suffers severe burns while pulling his school children from a burning bus.
How many firemen and policemen died in the World Trade Center towers, and we hear over and over again; “they gave themselves for all those innocent people who were victims of terrorism”.
Even our fictional heroes, in every story, are involved in risking themselves for the innocent.
But Barabbas was a robber. A thief. A creepy, slimy little sneak, who takes away that which others have worked for, with no intention of giving it back.
When I was a police officer, my favorite part of my job, was arresting burglars and robbers.
When I lock my doors and my windows, I want even the cockroaches to stay out.
Burglary, and the removal the another’s property from their person by means of force or fear are loathsome to me, and it always did my heart good to get them off the streets.
Jesus’ substitution for Barabbas did not constitute a miraculous reprieve for an innocent man. Barabbas was guilty. He was guilty of robbery, and he was guilty of violating the laws of the governing authority, and whether deliberate or through negligence, he was guilty of stealing someone’s life away, and he deserved to die.
And so does all mankind. When Jesus died on the cross for us, He wasn’t dying to rescue poor, weak, innocent mankind from the clutches of big, mean, evil, Satan.
Paul makes that clear in Romans 5, when he says, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."
We were His enemies. We were not ignorant slaves who needed emancipation and education; we were hateful enemies ~ rebels, who needed to lay down our arms in surrender. We were all, ALL, guilty, sinful, enemies of God, and deserving of death.
So let’s talk about:
BARABBAS UNDER THE SENTENCE OF DEATH
As this day in history began, Barabbas, no doubt, sat in a cell, maybe chained to a wall, waiting. There could have been no expectation of escaping the cross, unless, of course, he had hopes that he would be the one released according to the Governor’s tradition for Passover.
You see, Pilate had a custom that during this highest of holy days for the nation of Israel, he would release one prisoner to the people as a show of good faith and to appease them somewhat, for all they had to endure from the Roman occupation during the rest of the year.
But could Barabbas even dream of being the one released? After all, there must have been other prisoners whose incarceration was solely political; men who had not murdered, and who were not robbers.
No, I suspect that Barabbas had no plans for the evening. Expect maybe ‘hangin’ out’ with his two buddies who were arrested with him.
Barabbas was under the sentence of death. He had been tried and found guilty, and the Governor himself had pronounced sentence, and placed his seal on the signed death warrant, and there was nothing left but the doing of it.
And like Barabbas, all of mankind is under that sentence.
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 “The wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23
All the world is guilty before a holy God, and all of mankind is under the curse of the Law, which demands the shedding of blood and death for the transgressor. There are no exceptions.
Unless, that is, we can find someone to die in our place.
BARABBAS SUBSTITUTED
In Ezekiel 18:4 God declares,
“Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die”
God is God. Rebellion against God’s ultimate authority over the life, in whatever form it manifests itself, is called sin. Because He is God, and all souls are His, He is just and righteous in declaring that the soul that sins will die.
In fact, to remain just and righteous, God must demand the death of the sinner, because His justice and His Holiness call for payment for sin.
In Deuteronomy 27 it says, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them.”
The foundation of the Law is the 10 Commandments, given by God to Moses on the mountain.
Dwight L. Moody once asked his congregation a rhetorical question. “If a man hangs over a precipice by a chain of 10 links, how many of those links must be broken in order to dash that man to his death?”
Well, the answer of course, is only one.
If a man is to be right before God by the keeping of the Law, then he must perfectly, and always, from his first breath until his last, keep that Law. But no man or woman ever born is able to say that he kept God’s law perfectly and always.
It cannot be done, because God’s Law is spiritual, and it cannot be kept by sinful flesh.
Isaiah tells us that God looked down the vast corridors of time and it distressed Him that He saw no man who could stand in the gap. No one innocent, who could act as substitute for mankind under sentence of death.
So His own arm brought salvation to Him. And if you go and read the 59th chapter of Isaiah you will see that from verse 16 he goes on to describe the Messiah, who would come and set things right.
God’s justice demands full payment for sin, which is death. But in His mercy, He provided a substitute.
He provided a substitute that day for Barabbas.
How his stomach must have churned, as he listened to the soldiers coming down the stone corridor, keys jangling, stopping at the door of his cell.
How stunned he must have been, when one of them said, “Get out, and don’t let us see your face again. The Governor has freed you. Another will die in your place”
You see, Jesus really did die in Barabbas’ place that day, because the people made a choice. It was either going to be Barabbas, or Jesus of Nazareth; so when they made their choice, Jesus literally became the substitute for the criminal.
Thus, Barabbas becomes a type of us, in that Jesus died in our place also. Just like Barabbas, we were set free...because Christ became our substitute. He became a curse for us, that we might be released from the curse of the Law that demanded death for sin.
Galatians 3:13 says,
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE’.”
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Barabbas drops out of history for us at this point; but I wonder...did he ever come to realize that Jesus did not only substitute him on that wooden cross on that day outside of Jerusalem’s walls; but became his Passover lamb, and died in his place, if only he would believe that this was the Christ, the Son of the Living God?
If he did, in truth, if any of us does, then we are not only set free from the curse of the law, but we are made brand new.
Let’s talk about:
BARABBAS MADE NEW
I repeat, we know nothing of Barabbas after it is declared that Jesus will become his substitute on the cross.
But I am confident of this one thing. Barabbas was left that day with a decision to make.
He had gotten a reprieve. He was a convicted robber and rebel and murderer, and he had just been handed his walking papers. Barabbas had a golden opportunity at that moment, to begin a new life ~ to start over as though none of his crimes had ever been committed.
More than that, he had an opportunity now to observe this Jesus, to hear two days later of His resurrection from the tomb, to go see for himself, to consider the claims of Christ and witness the testimony of those who followed Him...
...and to decide to believe himself, and pass once more, from death into life, accepting this Jesus once more, and in an infinitely more significant way, as his substitute.
And once more, Barabbas becomes a type for us, because, hearer,
you also have this golden opportunity presented to you today.
Like Barabbas, we are rebels against the Government of God. The first man sinned and from him we all inherited a sin nature, and spiritual death through sin.
Because we have a fallen nature, our natural inclination is to attempt to usurp the authority of God and be gods unto ourselves. In our very best moments, with the very best of intentions, we are still helpless, sinful, enemies of God; for as Romans 8:7,8 says:
“...because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
Like Barabbas, we are murderers. In our rebellion against God we didn’t care for His justice or His righteousness; and we rejected His patience and His mercy, and each turned aside becoming useless, and each became so depraved in our indifference that we didn’t care that Jesus had to shed His blood and die.
We saw Him, beaten and scourged and spit-upon, nailed hands and feet to a cross and lifted up from the earth, and we wagged our heads and turned and walked away saying “Better Ye than me”. And cared not for His wounds.
Like Barabbas, we are robbers. Slimy little sneak thieves, who take and take and take from God, as though He owes us something, with no intention of ever giving back; when all that we have is His.
But Jesus told Nicodemus, “...as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.”
And as Barabbas that day had that opportunity to look to the cross and read that sign that said, “This is the King of the Jews” and hear the words of his substitute as He prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, and to hear the testimony of those who had seen Him, risen from the dead and ascended into Heaven with a promise to return...
...so we have that opportunity to look to the cross and be drawn to Him; to hear His promise that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life; and to believe; and to be saved.
Accept Him today as your substitute.
He has paid the price in full. There is no more price to be paid.
Your cell door has been opened ~ you’ve been handed your walking papers ~ the decree of debt against you has been taken out of the way, having been nailed to His cross...
and more...
He has risen from the tomb in triumph over death and hell for you!
Have you seen that you are just like Barabbas? Can you confess that you have been guilty of rebellion and robbery and murder and deserve death?
Then look up! Look to the cross and see your Substitute there, pouring out His innocent blood to pay the penalty for your crimes.
Go to the tomb! It’s empty! He is risen, just as He said; and His call is “Follow Me! Don’t go your way any longer. The way of the cross leads to the empty tomb and to life eternal! The price is paid, new life begins for you now ~ and it is life that is abundant, and full.”
Praise His name forever! HE LIVES!
