Imagine yourself sitting on death row, with all the emotions running through your mind as the end comes closer and closer. With every appeal for pardon and every stay of execution exhausted, you endure each agonizing minute in hopeless condemnation. There is absolutely no way out, your actions have sealed your fate. Suddenly the silence is broken by the sound of approaching footsteps. A clamor of metal echoes through the building as surprisingly your cell door swings open. You’re ordered to your feet; your shackles are removed. Thoroughly confused you then hear the words, “you are free to go. You have received a full pardon. Someone is going to die in your place.” A man named Barabbas experienced just that. Using a most bizarre array of circumstances, Matthew paints a magnificent picture of Christ taking our place and dying on the cross. As we trace the events that are described so vividly for us in Matthew 27, we will encounter a stirring scene that gets to the very heart of the Gospel message: By the unjust death of a righteous man, a world of condemned prisoners is set free. The nagging question that still remains: Why of all the prisoners sitting in the Roman jail, did Pilate select Barabbas? Why not one of the two thieves scheduled to be crucified that day – the two who later would be crucified with Jesus? Why would Pilate offer to free a man with such a notorious criminal record as
Barabbas?
I. Pilate: The governor who is exhausting all efforts to find a way around putting the innocent Jesus to death.
A. A close look at Pilate that will enable us to gain some insight into the choices he made.
1. Pilate ruled as a Governor over Judea from A.D. 26 and 37.
2. The Governors were chosen by the emperor and were given full control over the province and the occupying army.
3. The governor’s main job was to maintain law and order, collect taxes and rule over judicial matters.
4. They determined who would be executed and who would be pardoned and they even appointed the high priest and the use of the temple funds.
5. Pilate still was ultimately accountable for the well-being of his province to Rome which played a major role in regard to his decision about Jesus.
B. What we discover from the writings of the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo, Pilate was not a big hit with the Jewish people.
1. All of Pilate’s efforts to enforce Roman rule in the province resulted in spectacular blunders or were deliberate offensive acts.
2. When Pilate first came to power all his soldiers carried banners that bore the image of the emperor which insulted the Jews who did not believe in emperor worship.
3. Pilate later chose to use temple funds on a variety of projects that made the Jews irate.
4. As the people would protest Pilate met their protests with violence.
C. A series of unfortunate events surrounded Pilate’s death.
1. In A.D. 36 Pilate had a skirmish with a group of Samaritans which resulted in many deaths and the protest over Pilate’s actions reached the ears of the Emperor Tiberius in Rome.
2. Unfortunately Tiberius died before Pilate reached Rome forcing him to deal with mentally unstable Gaius Caligula.
3. Evidence points to the probability that Gaius ordered Pilate to take his own life.
4. With Pilate’s history in mind let’s take a look at the next crucial character in this drama unfolding in Jerusalem.
II. Barabbas: the criminal on death row with no hope of parole.
A. Barabbas was an Aramaic name that meant the son of the teacher.
1. If this means that he was the son of a Jewish rabbi Pilate’s situation gets quite a bit more delicate.
2. He could be one of the impatient zealots that were tired of waiting for God to deliver the Jewish people from the rule of Rome.
3. Some early Greek manuscripts record his name as Jesus Barabbas which gives us a very vivid contrast.
4. Two deliverers: Barabbas a political revolutionary, and Christ the true liberator.
B. What is the crime that Barabbas is guilty of?
1. The Greek word for robber, lestes was often used in way different from the way we would expect.
2. Josephus often used this term to describe the zealots who revolted violently against Rome in an attempt to liberate the Jewish people.
3. So Barabbas is sitting in a Roman Prison awaiting his fate for rebelling against Rome.
C. Barabbas was more than likely imprisoned in a cell at the Fortress Antonia.
1. This fortress in Jerusalem also more than likely housed Pilate’s residence and the barracks for the soldiers.
2. Pilate spoke privately in his residence with Jesus, but spoke outside from his judgment seat to the religious leaders.
3. Barabbas probably could here the crowd from where he was located but not Pilate.
4. With this picture vividly painted in our minds lets begin to see the rest of the drama unfold.
III. A decision made according to political influences.
A. Having found Jesus innocent and having no luck in passing Him off on Herod, Pilate of politically stuck.
1. He saw the religious leaders’ motives but he did not want to incur their wrath.
2. Humiliated once by these people once in front of the emperor Tiberius, he was not about to let it happen again.
3. Pilate remembered the Passover custom of releasing a prisoner of the people’s choice.
4. So Pilate puts two men in front of the crowd one in his view a contemptible murdering bandit and the other a peaceful loving rabbi.
5. One so blatantly guilty the other obviously innocent. What could go wrong? Everything!!
6. Because a mere bandit in Roman eyes was a freedom fighter in the eyes of the Jewish people.
B. A message that arrives from Pilate’s wife proceeds to unravel Pilate’s nerves even more.
1. The plot of this drama begins to thicken with the addition of this clear warning.
2. Matthew obviously includes this to provide more evidence of Jesus’ innocence.
3. The irony is that pagan women remained open to God’s voice while the leaders of His chosen people turned a death ear to it.
C. Pilate begins to cave in as tensions start to escalate.
1. The chief priests want the release of Barabbas. The one who had committed acts of treason.
2. Bent on murdering Jesus they skillfully persuaded the crowd to follow their twisted logic.
3. Picture for a moment the drama from Barabbas’ vantage point, all he hears is, “Barabbas! Crucify him! Crucify him!”
4. This probably terrified him thinking that the very people he had fought for had turned against him.
5. Why would they crucify him and bow to Rome?
6. He could have not known that his destiny was divinely enjoined to that of Jesus.
D. A riot – just what Pilate wanted to avoid especially with so man Jews in Jerusalem for the Passover festival.
1. From his perspective this would only lead to more trouble with the people and more embarrassment in the eyes of Tiberius.
2. Pilate decided not to carry out his responsibility to uphold justice by letting the crowd have their way.
3. Barabbas though he should have been condemned was released.
4. Someone else would be on the cross for him fighting sin and death and He would win the victory by laying then His arms.
5. The crowd thought their greatest enemy was Rome not the sin in their hearts that marred each day of their lives.
6. So they released their hero Barabbas and sentenced to death the Giver of Life.
7. They preferred the man of violence to the man of love.
8. We can not help but ask ourselves, which man do we prefer?
On February 3, 1943, the troop ship Dorchester went down in the icy Atlantic off the tip of Greenland with heavy loss of life. It was not the worst disaster of a long war, but we have good reason to remember it.
There were four men aboard, chaplains dedicated to the services of God and their fellow men. George L. Fox and Clark V. Poling were Protestant ministers, Alexander D. Goode was a Jewish rabbi, and John P. Washington was a Catholic priest.
When the torpedoes struck around one o’clock in the morning many of the inexperienced GI’s were caught sleeping without their lifejackets, although that was contrary to orders. In the fright and confusion some were still without them even after all the surplus stocks had been distributed.
Each of the four chaplains wore a lifejacket when he began working among the men to comfort the wounded, to calm the shocked, to help distribute lifejackets, to guide men toward the lifeboats. Places in the boats were declined by the chaplains. When last seen in the light of flares just before the ship went down, not one of the chaplains still wore a lifejacket. Theirs had been forced on unwilling soldiers taught to obey the orders of their superiors. These four dedicated men, symbolic of religious freedom in America, stood together arm-in-arm praying for those young men of America for whom now only prayers were left.
