OPEN: (began with music theme of CSI – “Who Are You”)
The year was 1910.
The place - Chicago, Illinois.
The time - The early hours of the morning.
Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Hiller were lying in bed when Mrs. Hiller sensed something was wrong. She awoke to see that the gas light outside their bedroom door was out. She woke her husband and asked him to go investigate.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hiller never got the chance to fix the night light. While he was out in the hall, he encountered a burglar and struggled with him at the top of the stairs. Several shots rang out, and Mr. Hiller ended up being shot twice… and died within moments.
The burglar fled into the night. But, later the early hours of the morning, local police questioned a parolee named Thomas Jennings. Jennings was injured, had a loaded gun, and was on parole for a previous burglary.
That alone would have made him a suspect in 1910… but something else confirmed the fact that he had been in the Hiller home that night and was indeed the killer.
In 1904, Scotland Yard brought an exhibit to the St. Louis World’s Fair. They demonstrated a new science to identify criminals long after they left the scene of the crime.
Does anybody know what science was? Fingerprinting.
American police officers were so intrigued that Scotland Yard began training many in law enforcement field on how to find and match fingerprints left at the scene of a crime with those of suspects.
Thomas Jennings had the singular honor of being the first killer to be convicted by the use of evidence from the use this new science. Unfortunately for him, a railing outside the home had just been painted the day before… and he left a clear imprint in the still drying paint.
APPLY: CSI’s theme music for its show is “Who Are You”, which is appropriate since the job of Crime Scene Investigators is to discover “Who Are You”. Who committed the crime they are investigating?
And one of the tools real CSI officers use frequently us to catch criminals is fingerprinting. The practice has become so prevalent in modern day crime fighting that fingerprinting has even found it’s way into everyday speech:
Someone will say “you’ve got your fingerprints all over that project.”
In Law Enforcement, if a someone’s fingerprints are found at the scene of the crime police will detain them as “persons of interest”. This is a polite way of saying: the police think THEY did it!
When it comes to the death of Christ on the cross there are several “Persons of Interest” who may be said to be “suspects” in the crime.
I. First, there are the Chief Priests and the Pharisees
Our text for today (for example) declares that Christ’s death was a pre-meditated action of the leaders of Israel.
Look with me to Matthew 26:3-4
“Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and KILL him.”
Their decision was premeditated. They plotted to kill Jesus. But why on earth would they seek Jesus’ death?
Why? Because they were afraid of Him.
Turn with me to John 11:45-53. Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead… and we’re told:
“Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary (Lazarus’ sister), and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.
But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. ‘What are we accomplishing?’ they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.’
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’
He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
So from that day on they plotted to take his life.”
They were afraid that everyone would start believing in Him and then they would lose their influence and authority over the people.
And they also feared Him because they felt that Rome would see Jesus as a threat to Caesar, and then the Legions would destroy all of Israel…and then there would be no personal influence and authority.
So… it was the Jewish leaders that killed Jesus… right?
II. Well, yeah… they were part of it… but they were not the only ones. Others had left their fingerprints at the scene of the crime as well.
Acts chapter 3 tells us that a crowd of Jewish people had gathered at the Temple and they saw Peter and John heal a lame man. Then Peter addressed those Jews and said:
“The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. YOU KILLED the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” Acts 3:13-15
Peter wasn’t talking to the priests and Pharisees here (although there may have been a few of them in the audience) He was talking to ordinary Jewish worshippers who had been part of crowd which had asked Pilate to have Jesus crucified.
They were as guilty as their leaders before God.
III. For some… those were the only fingerprints they could see on the cross.
One of the problems in Crime Scene Investigation can be the tendency to see only part of the evidence and ignore other information that can lead to the arrest of others who are responsible. And that is what has happened all too often in the history of the church down through the ages.
Everybody KNEW that the Jews had killed Jesus. And they figured… if the Jews killed Jesus… then the Jews didn’t deserve to live.
From the Middle Ages on, wicked men have subjected the Jewish people to constant harassment, forced removal from their homes and even from the nations they had lived in. Sometimes this hatred of the Jewish race even lead to individual deaths and even group massacres.
The Jewish people suffered terribly in the First Crusade (1096-99).
They were a major target of the Spanish Inquisition
And of course Hitler played on similar prejudices to persecute the Jews during WWII
So, when Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ premiered, a virtual firestorm took place:
Newsweek’s John Meacham wrote in his column, “Mel Gibson’s powerful but troubling new movie, ’The Passion of the Christ,’ is reviving one of the most explosive questions ever… Who really killed Jesus?”
Meacham went on to write: “The question as to who killed Christ has been discussed on numerous radio and TV shows. On MSNBC’s "Deborah Norville Tonight" a United Methodist minister, a Jewish rabbi, and Morris Chapman, head of the SBC’s executive committee debated the issue.
Now… why debate that question?
Do you really think that the Jewish people actually feared another set of persecutions because of Gibson’s movie??? No… I don’t think so.
From the very beginning, the people who opposed Gibson’s movie did so for a much more basic reason: they knew what the central message of Scripture was that it was our own fingerprints that were all over that cross.
Hollywood opposed that movie because the movie declared the Biblical message that it was our sins that put Jesus on the cross. Because of that fact, the movie was a condemnation of Hollywood morality… and they didn’t like it.
ILLUS: About 6 years ago, the famous singer Billy Joel, said “There’s a guy... nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everyone’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment, but I said to myself, ‘Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr on my hands. I pass on all of this.’”
Now, Billy Joel could try to pass on this if he wanted to, but Isaiah 53:5-6 declared “…he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus died for us
When asked in an interview "Who killed Christ?" Mel Gibson said, "We are all culpable for the death of Christ. My sins, your sins put him on that cross."
ILLUS: The Dutch artist, Rembrandt once created a powerful painting of the Crucifixion. It’s powerful because of the attention to detail. When you look on the picture your eyes are immediately drawn to Cross with Christ hanging there. Then your attention becomes focused on the crowd gathered at the foot of the Cross you can see the attitudes and actions of the people that are there. And lastly – if you look closely – you can see at the edge of the picture, that there’s someone standing in the shadow.
Does anyone have an idea of who that might be in the shadows???
It’s Rembrandt himself - Rembrandt was declaring that he realized he had helped to crucify Jesus. His fingerprints were on the cross.
As one ancient hymn declared:
’Twas I that shed the sacred blood,
I nailed Him to the tree,
I crucified the Christ of God,
I joined the mockery!
In the shadows of the cross - along with Rembrandt - you and I are there as well!
IV. Finally we need to realize Christ’s death on the cross was NOT our decision…
It is true that Jesus was on the cross because of OUR sins…
And it’s true that the Jews may have been instrumental in calling for His crucifixion
And it’s also true that the Romans may have been implicated in his death because they nailed Him to that cross.
But it really wasn’t their decision… and it wasn’t our decision that put Jesus on the cross.
ULTIMATELY… it was God’s decision
Acts 2:23 tells us “This man was handed over to (be crucified) by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge…”
Jesus came for the express purpose of dying for us. His death had been planned by God.
And He was longggg before the Jews ever knew He existed
And He was sent longggg before the Romans ever crucifixion as a form of execution..
AND Jesus wasn’t sent to the cross because God hated us
Billy Joel had it wrong. Somebody had taught him wrong, or he misunderstood. Jesus wasn’t sent their because God wanted us to look upon His face and feel self loathing and guilt.
NO! “For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever might believe in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.
Romans 5:8 says: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
And Romans 5:10 goes on to say “… when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son…”
Did you catch that??? Jesus died to bring us to God. To reconcile us to Him.
BUT Jesus didn’t die on the cross because we deserved that act of sacrifice. Or because we were nice people and God was doing us a favor. We were sinners. We were enemies of God.
The crucifixion was planned. The Bible tells us that this idea of Jesus’ crucifixion was planned from the very beginning. As Revelation 13:8 says “…the Lamb (Jesus)… was slain from the creation of the world.”
The prophesies of the coming Jesus and His sacrifice began in the book of Genesis and occurred again and again through the rest of the Bible. God had planned the crucifixion of Jesus. It was His decision. And God planned this not because He hated us… Jesus died on the cross because God hated sin.
ILLUS: A. W. Tozer: “God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hated the polio that would take the life of the child.”
CLOSE: I read a story once about a woman who was dying of AIDS. A preacher was summoned, and he attempted to comfort her, but to no avail.
“I am lost,” she said. “I have ruined my life and every life around me. Now I’m going painfully to hell. There is no hope for me.”
The preacher was at a loss of how to answer her. His eyes scanned the room and he saw a tattered dresser over the corner with a framed picture of a pretty girl on top of it.
“Who is this?” he asked.
For the first time since he entered the room the woman smiled. “She is my daughter, the one beautiful thing in my life.”
Then the preacher knew what would help. He asked: “How much do you love her? Would you help her if she was in trouble, or made a mistake? Would you forgive her? Would you still love her?”
The woman was so shocked she almost cried: “Of course I would! I would do anything for her! Why do you ask such a question?”
“Because I want you to know,” said the preacher, “that God loves you so much He literally has a picture of you on His dresser as well.”
We are guilty of the death of Christ. Our fingerprints are on the cross. And Christ’s death was a crime of passion. But it wasn’t a crime of passion the way we often think of it.
The crime was ours… and the passion was God’s. He loved us so much that if you or I had been the only people on earth… Jesus would still have been sent to die for us.
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES
CSI Jerusalem - The Motive = Acts 2:22-24
A Centurion’s Story = Matthew 27:50-54
CSI Jerusalem - Who Killed Jesus? = Matthew 26:1-5
Evidence That Demands A Verdict = Luke 24:1-35
Eyewitness Account = 1 Corinthians 15:1-8
