Trading Places

If you have your bibles, I'm going to invite you to open them at this time.

Matthew chapter 27 verse 15.

Matthew 27:15

I want to congratulate our young people.

Last Sunday we had a great service here.

Sponsored and put on by our youth department here.

Real youth.

So God bless our young people, amen.

Wonderful service we had last Sunday and we're just going to continue in that same spirit.

Matthew chapter 27 verse 15.

Matthew 27:15

I'm going to read a few verses here and then we will skip over to some others.

It reads this way.

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to releasing the multitude, one prisoner whom

they wished.

And at that time they had a notorious prisoner named Barabbas.

Therefore when they had gathered together, their pilot said to them, who do you want

me to release to you?

Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?

Verse 21, the governor answered and said to them, which of the two do you want me to release

to you?

They said Barabbas.

Pilot said to them, what then shall I do with Jesus whom is called Christ?

They all said to him, let him be crucified.

Today with God's help I want to speak on the subject trading places, trading places, amen.

And I'm going to invite you church and friend to pray with me and we're going to ask the

Lord to speak to us in a very special way.

We're going to relinquish the remainder of the service into the hands of the Holy Spirit.

So amen.

I'm going to invite you right there.

Would you go before God with me and prayer?

Let's ask God to continue to speak and move.

Father we love you today.

We thank you God for your riches and mercy.

We thank you for divine visitation, for the manifestation of your glory, your power.

The evidence is all around us.

You are in this place Lord.

We thank you Lord that over 2000 years ago you took our place God.

You took the place that belonged to us and you went to the cross for us.

I ask today God that you would help me God under the direction, under the inspiration

of the Holy Spirit to deliver this word that will hopefully bring us back to that place,

God of surrender.

God anoint our hearing, anoint our understanding and anoint my lips of clay.

In the name of Jesus we pray right now in Jesus' name.

And everyone say amen.

Amen.

You may be seated in the presence of God.

Allow me church to transport you to a moment in time that profoundly altered the course

of history.

Imagine standing in the dusty streets of Jerusalem amidst the clamor and the chaos of a crowd

stirred by fear and uncertainty.

It is here in the shadow of the cross that we encounter a man whose life intersects with

the very heart of salvation, the infamous Barabbas.

Barabbas finds himself on the brink of death shackled by the chains of his own wrongdoings

and misgivings.

To them to die for his crimes, Barabbas awaits his fate in the darkness of a prison cell

lonely counting down the days.

But little does he know that the story, his story is about to take an unexpected turn,

one that will echo throughout all eternity.

As the sun rises over Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor, emerges to preside

over this trial.

You may call it a kangaroo court, meaning that the outcome was already determined.

Nevertheless, he presides over Jesus who was accused of blasphemy and sedition.

It was the custom, every Passover, that the Roman Empire would part in one criminal and

that the Jews had the privilege of selecting the person who would be released.

So according to that custom, Pilate stands before the people in a bid to satisfy their

bloodthirst within them and offers them a choice to release either Jesus or Barabbas.

Can you imagine with me for a moment what the atmosphere must have been like, the tension

thickening in the air as the fate of these two men hung in the balance.

And if you can, with your mind's eye, picture the ruckus and the drama unfolding in real

time as the Jews see two options placed before them, one a notorious criminal and the other

the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ.

And you would think that the selection, the choice would be clear and apparent.

But the longer the people began to clamor among themselves, the longer they began to

chat and news began to spread among the people and folks turning to one side and sharing,

well, what are you going to vote for and what do you think?

It seemed apparent that the decision was not immediately clear, but as it turns out in

this moment as these two men's futures hang in the balance, Barabbas probably thought

that his fate was sealed, that he resigned himself to his destiny, awaiting his sentence

unaware of what was going on.

To him, all of this seemed to be a bit of a circus.

He doesn't even understand why he is in this position at all.

In his own mind, he thought the choice is clear.

I am a convicted criminal.

He is an innocent man.

Why are we even going through all of this anyways?

But as the tension continued to rise and angers and emotions started to boil over, it started

to feel uneasy and uncertain and amidst all of that, there was something taking place in

the backdrop of eternity, something that had been divinely orchestrated by God from the

very foundations of the world.

Unbeknownst to Barabbas, God was already unfolding his divine plan to rescue humanity from its

sin.

Barabbas is just an unsuspecting character.

Barabbas has no idea what is going on, but his whole life is about to change.

This is when an unexpected twist happens.

The crowd begins to rise up with their voices and begin to shout from the front to the back,

from the side to the side, both men and women, young and old, child and elderly, as one concert

and one chorus, they all seem to be in consensus with each other that what they wanted was not

Barabbas, but indeed they wanted Jesus to be crucified.

So they begin to shout, give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas.

We want Barabbas.

I can just imagine that as Pontius Pilate is overseeing this whole affair and supervising

this court that's in session, could not believe his ears as he was hearing the chants, give

us Barabbas, we want Barabbas, we'll take him.

And this must have come as a shock not only to Pontius Pilate, his wife who had been dreaming

about all of these things that were happening.

In fact, she was tormented by a dream about what was going on and she even told Pilate,

her husband, you need to let this Jesus go because I was terrorized by a dream about

him and I don't want anything to do with him.

And that's in the back of his mind and the chants of the people are coming before him

and they are crying, give us Barabbas.

And he must have been scratching his head, but no one was more grieved with doubt.

No one was more in a state of shock and disbelief than Barabbas.

The shock must have washed over him as he heard his name started to echo through the

dusty streets and among all the people from every class of society, the religious class,

the interreligious and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and everybody is

all in one chorus and he can't believe himself what is happening in this moment.

He is just a spellbound, he's just dazed and confused of what is happening and at the same

time Barabbas is feeling the weight of guilt and the weight of the pressure upon him.

He's feeling just unqualified and undeserving of what is taking place here and all this

pressure is starting to mount on him and pile up on him as his soul is starting to realize

that his life was being spared at the expense of an innocent man and they continue to shout,

give us Barabbas, we want Barabbas and Pila looks over and says, well, I put the decisions

and the hands of the people have already washed my hands of this situation and so he concedes

and he puts Barabbas in front of them and he steps forward and instead of being met

with judgment and instead of being met with condemnation, Barabbas is met with grace,

a grace that he could ever, never earn on his own and from there Jesus willingly trade

places with a man who not only did deserve the freedom that he was being given but a

man who had already figured that he was going to die very slow and painful death, the death

on the cross and he can't imagine what was going on Barabbas now as they start to unloose

the shackles from his hands and giving him his papers, you can go free, he sees the innocent

man, he sees the one they call the Messiah, the one they call the anointed one, the Christ,

the Son of God is now being led away to Galgotha, to Calvary where he's going to die and I don't

know the Bible doesn't tell us but I've got to imagine that those that were standing witness

to Calvary and seeing the Lord Jesus die upon that cross that somewhere in the background

of that scene probably Barabbas was looking from behind the scenes and seeing how this

innocent man was dying upon the cross and as he was shedding his blood and as they were

nailing his hands and feet to the cross and how every drop of his blood was being free

and that Barabbas was being set free from his own life and I just imagine Barabbas standing

in the background maybe he's not too close to the cross because he's hoping that people

don't change their minds, I mean he doesn't want to die that death but he had to be watching

from afar and saying I cannot believe that this man who found no guilt and no fault in

him is taking my place on that cross, it should be me on that cross, it should be me dying

that criminals dead, it should be me suffering with 39 lashes on my back and maybe a crown

of thorns on my head but as he stood afar and he saw redemption lifted up on that cross

on Calvary's hill it must have done something to him that would forever alter his life and

my friend today I have come to preach to you dear friend, dear saint, dear somebody who

is watching today that the story of Barabbas is our story, somebody give God some praise

today hallelujah.

We are Barabbas, we are Barabbas, I am Barabbas whether you want to admit it or not whether

you care to identify with this man or not I have come to inform you today that we like

him stood condemned before a holy God guilty of our rebellion and our sin but in his infinite

love and his everlasting mercy he took our place, hallelujah and in doing so he did the

most extreme extravagant exchange in human history it is what theologians have called

the divine exchange or the great exchange where God took our sins and our sorrows and

he took our place on the cross and I want to talk to you today about that exchange I

want to tell you first of all that he traded guilt for grace.

He traded guilt someone say guilt someone say for grace.

Barabbas was a convicted felon with a long rap sheet that included robbery, murder and

insurrection.

Matthew described him as a notorious prisoner suggesting that he had a widespread and infamous

reputation in the city especially for his role in a failed attempt to overthrow the

Roman government.

By all accounts Barabbas was a terrorist and he was found culpable and he was found liable

and he was guilty as charged and if there was anybody that deserved capital punishment

it was him.

He committed the most heinous of things robbery, murder among them but the fact that he tried

to lead or at least participate in a revolt a coordinated coup to overthrow the Roman

government in itself was worthy of execution.

This man was guilty it was a closed shut case there was no denying that he in fact was culpable

and there is no attempt at least in the scriptures that show us that he even appealed or challenged

the charges against him.

He probably figured I am guilty.

It doesn't appear that Barabbas was even remorseful for what he did.

In fact he may have been defiant and proud of his actions.

He probably even saw himself as a symbol of a political revolution.

You got to understand despite whatever movies or plays that you have seen of this man everybody

portrays Barabbas as a madman foaming at the mouth like an animal.

I want you to understand that more than likely that was not the case.

Barabbas was not a madman in that sense.

He saw himself as a political liberator.

He saw himself as serving a greater cause which was to overthrow the Roman government

which was what a lot of the Jews ironically enough wanted Jesus to do.

They hoped that Jesus would be the one to bring them political liberation from the hands

of the Roman Empire and Barabbas through his own means and through his own nefarious ways

he tried to do exactly that overthrow the Roman government.

And you can see that the charges were stacked high against this man.

And yet I can state with a fair amount of certainty that Barabbas did not want despite

everything that he did despite knowing that he probably would pay the ultimate cost if

he got caught doing what he did.

Barabbas did not want to suffer the immeasurable pain of a crucifixion.

This would not be a lethal injection.

This would not be a humane way of dying.

This would not be even an electric chair that although inhumane would be relatively quick

in its judgment this would be a slow and painful death.

I can assure you today that Barabbas did not want to die on a cross but little did he know

that Jesus was about to take his place and exchange guilt for grace.

Your rap seat today my friend may not be as long or egregious as Barabbas.

You may not sit there in your life and in your past and say I am not guilty of the things

that Barabbas ever did.

My resume, my rap sheet is cleaner than his.

You may hang your hat at being a dignified sinner.

Somebody who would never do as if there was such a thing who would never be caught doing

some of the things that Barabbas have done.

And maybe that is the case but we've got to remember something today church.

We embody the words of the Psalmist and King David who wrote these words famously in Psalm

51 and verse 5.

Behold I was shaping in iniquity and in sin my mother did conceive me.

From this we understand my friend that sin is not just an action or a thought or a lifestyle

but sin is a sinful nature that we are born with before we take our first breath and before

anybody ever taught us how to sin we are born in sin.

It is encoded in our spiritual DNA inherited from Adam the original sinner.

So I hate to tell you today but we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Amen.

And there are many today that are that that was shy away or there are many today that

would you know balk at the idea that they would be anybody like Barabbas guilty as charged

but you got to understand that just by virtue of being born into this world we are born

in a depraved state.

We read in Romans chapter 5 and verse 12 it says Paul writes just as through one man sin

Romans 5 · chapter mention

entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because oh someone

say oh oh sinned.

Anybody believe the word of God today but several verses later Paul continues to write

and tell us that although we are born in a sinful state and yes sin had his reign not

only in the world but in our own personal lives we have an answer we have redemption.

He reveals the great exchange in verse 20 but we're sin abounded and it did grace abounded

much more.

Can we give God a hand praise right now for his grace.

Come on let's give a hand praise for his grace today.

How many of you are thankful for the grace of God today.

Hey I said how many of you are thankful for the grace of God today.

I'm here to tell you that the bad news is that we were all born in sin and sin did abound

and sin was extravagant and sin was rooted in the very heart of man but thank God that

where sin was extravagant grace was much more extravagant where sin abounded grace did much

more abound.

I am standing here today behind this pulpit not because I've been good all my life not

because I am perfect not because I am sinless and not because I am righteous in my own merit

but I am standing here today and you are sitting there today simply because of the grace of

Almighty God.

Oh thank you Jesus for your grace.

What about Yashondalamakaya Jesus took Barabbas' place and ours on the cross for the word says

for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness

of God.

It is somebody shout hallelujah today.

The technical term for this or the theological term is substitutionary atonement.

That's a fancy way of saying he became our substitute.

He took our place because I don't know about you you can call it whatever you want use

the fancy term or not but all I know is this it should have been me on the cross.

Hallelujah.

It should have been me on the cross.

It should have been me that died.

It should have been me that suffered but I thank God today that even when it should have

been me he traded guilt for grace and through grace we receive forgiveness and righteousness.

He became our substitute.

He became the lamb.

He became the substitutionary lamb to a tone for the sins of the world and the next thing

he did after trading grace or guilt for grace is he traded death for life.

Someone say life.

Prisoners on death row are often called dead men walking and Barabbas was a dead man walking.

His days were numbered.

He knew I don't know how many days he spent in that prison cell or if he marked them on

the wall scratching each day off waiting to get his number called his inmate number and

his day of execution but he knew he knew that he was a dead man walking that his days were

numbered that his fate was essentially sealed and that he was just waiting for his time

bearing the chains that he held firmly in his cell.

He knew there was no getting out of it.

There was no complaint.

He could not file an appeal with the appeals court and go all the way up to the Supreme

Court.

No, he was finished.

He was as good as dead and that's all that he had to look forward to.

So when Pontius Pilate stood him next to Jesus and presented the Jews with a choice,

he had to be thinking, okay, here we go.

He had to be thinking when they called him out of his cell and they led him and when

he figured out what was going on, I know what's going on here.

Once a year during the feast of the Passover, they're going to let somebody go free and

he just probably sat there like, let's just get this thing over with because there's no

way they're going to let me go.

There's no way.

He knows that he's already got a bad name and it's just a matter of time and so he's

probably thinking to himself, this is it.

I'm cooked.

I'm done.

I'm a dead man.

It's over for me.

I'm out of options.

I'm out of appeals.

I'm out of time and so it's going to happen.

I'm just going to die and it's going to be painful.

It's going to be ugly and these are the thoughts that are kind of racing through his mind as

they present him in front of the people and he came face to face with his own mortality

and coming face to face with his own mortality and his own finality.

Barnabas, not Barnabas, but Barabbas.

He embodied the reality of what Paul writes in Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin is death.

Wages of sin is death.

You all know what a wage is, right?

It's what you get paid.

It's what you earn.

You have a job and you have a wage and every couple of weeks or every month you get a paycheck.

Those are your wages.

That's what you earned and what Paul is saying is that death is what we earned.

God didn't just give it to us.

We earned it through our own sinfulness.

You see, death as we know it today, death as we know it today did not exist in the world

in the very beginning where there was no sin.

God made us to live in harmony and in fellowship with him without sin.

This was God's original plan, but God warned man.

He warned man in Genesis 2.17 about the trees that he can eat from, the tree of life or the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He said, you must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat

from it, you will surely or certainly.

If you eat of this tree, Adam, you're going to die.

And not only was this true physically, but spiritually there was death.

And from that point on, man who was made to live forever on this earth now must come face

to face with his own mortality and die.

And death reigned supreme.

And that's exactly what happened because we know the story that Adam took of the fruit

and he disobeyed God and death came into the world.

But Jesus, Jesus came to trade places with us.

He came to trade places with you.

Amen today.

To offer you the greatest exchange.

The rest of Romans 623, we read that the wages of sin is dead, but someone say, but the gift

of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus outlawed.

Hallelujah, somebody.

I said, hallelujah, somebody hallelujah.

Hey, I got a question today.

How many of you lack receiving gifts?

Hey, I said, how many of you lack receiving gifts?

I like receiving gifts.

Amen.

It's nice when you got a gift, but every gift has got to be opened and somebody today may

have the gift of God just waiting to be opened.

Whether that gift is salvation, whether that gift is forgiveness, whether that gift is

restoration, but the gift of God is eternal life.

And all you've got to do is open up your heart and receive that gift by saying, somebody

here under the sound of my voice, God's calling you to receive that gift.

You need to be baptized once and for all for the remission of your sin.

You've got to go down in the water and be baptized in Jesus name because there is no

other name.

Come on now, somebody.

I said, there is no other name.

I'm in my own heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Come on, clap your hands and give God some praise.

You know you get baptized once, you need to be filled with the spirit of God.

You need to get right with God.

You need to turn back to God.

You need to repent from your sins and get right with God today.

And you know what?

He's not standing here with hands of judgment and condemnation.

You know, he's got a gift, he's got a gift of salvation, he's got a gift of life.

Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.

Hallelujah, somebody.

And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

I got good news for you.

If you're in Christ, you're never going to die.

You're like, oh, I get to live forever.

Well, not in this body.

Watch out now, hallelujah.

But you'll never die.

And this concept of never death is so prevalent in the writings of the New Testament, because

even when the apostles talk of death, they don't speak of death in terms of permanence

or finality.

They speak of the saints of God when they have passed as sleeping.

Hallelujah.

They are simply asleep, waiting to be called home.

Hallelujah.

So even when we die, the Bible says to be absent from this body is to be present.

Come on now, somebody, be present with the Lord.

We live forever.

We live forever.

How many of you are grateful to God for that?

Can you clap your hands and give them some praise?

Hallelujah, somebody.

Come to preach to you in the simplest way I can, this gospel, and show you that we are

barabbas, we are barabbas in that Jesus took our place.

Yes, he did.

He took our place.

I'm just about done here.

I want to show you one more divine trade off that occurs with Jesus and us or Barabbas

representing us.

The final exchange that we see is how Jesus traded chains for freedom.

Whoo.

I get excited about this one, y'all.

I get excited about this one.

Listen, the US president and the governor of the state have the sole authority to grant

clemency to a death row in the name.

They have that sole authority to do so.

And there are many that every year are appealing for their cases to be heard so that the governor

or the president of the US will grant them clemency.

But in many of those death row cases, in most cases, when they are granted clemency, their

sentence is simply reduced from a death sentence to either life sentence or just longer time

in jail.

But very rarely are those with a death sentence given a free and unconditional pardon.

Huh.

Happens very rarely.

Most times the sentences are simply reduced.

In those cases, the punishment is lessened and the prisoner is not released back into

society.

The prisoner remains a prisoner.

Now maybe in his mind, he's thinking, well, I'd rather live my life, my days out in prison

than die.

But he's a prisoner or she's a prisoner nonetheless.

I want to tell somebody today as I get ready to close, I want to tell somebody today that

the tradeoff that we have in Christ, when he went to Calvary and he took our place on

Galgotha's Hill, the hill of the skull, died and bled for our sins.

It was not just so that we could avoid death, but so that we can be completely and totally

set free.

My God, hallelujah.

When Jesus traded places with him, Barabbas, he didn't go back to his jail cell.

He didn't go back to his jail cell.

They released him back into society and he was free.

Chains that were hanging from his wrist, shackled to his feet, were unloosed.

Maybe Barabbas kind of hung around the prison for a little while.

They were like, is this really happening?

Or maybe he ran and said, I'm out of here.

But either way, it began to sink into him that I'm really free.

I'm really free.

He was so used to having chains on him, he didn't know what it was like to lift his hands

with no chains.

He was so used to moving like this.

He didn't know how to move like this.

They had imagined what Barabbas's mama thought when he came back.

What are you doing?

He probably thought he broke out of jail or something.

No, mama.

They let me go for real this time.

Oh, my God, hallelujah.

I'm home, mama.

They let me out.

I'm free, somebody say I'm free.

He went back to the neighborhood.

Is that Barabbas coming over here?

The boys were like, Barabbas, what happened, man?

We heard you got locked up.

We heard you're doing time.

What are you doing?

He said if you only knew.

Oh, come on.

I need somebody's help today.

I need somebody's help today.

If you only knew what happened, I was destined to die, but then there was a man named Jesus.