Jesus Exchanged for Barabbas

Mark 15, verses 6 through 15.

Mark 15:6–15

Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.

And among the rebels in the prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas.

And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them.

And he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?

For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have them release for them Barabbas instead.

And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call king of the Jews?

And they cried out again, Crucify him.

And Pilate said to them, Why?

What evil has he done?

But they shouted all the more, Crucify him.

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas.

And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

This is this is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's always a joy to gather together each Sunday.

And we are continuing in our series through Mark, which will culminate on Easter Sunday when we get to see the resurrection.

So it's pretty cool the way that's lined up.

This Sunday we're looking at Christ and Barabbas, this time where Jesus is exchanged for a murderer.

So let's pray.

Father, we praise you for your loving kindness, that you're gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

Lord, I pray that you would open our hearts, that we might see the wonder of the exchange that you made on our behalf.

Father, we pray that we would see the sin clearly exposed that led to your crucifixion.

Lord, we would see that not as a distant thing, but as something that is in our own hearts.

And that because we see the sin that led you to the cross as something close and in our own hearts, Lord, we might see what you accomplished as our on the cross in atoning for our sin as something that also applies directly to our own hearts.

That we might come to you, Father, and because of what Christ has done, we might come with a spirit of adoption, that we cry out, Abba, Father, that your spirit would testify with our spirit that we are sons of God.

Father, I pray that you would work that and draw us into worship of you as we look at your text this morning.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So in today's story, we see that envy leads to murder.

And that might make the text feel sort of far away if you haven't murdered anyone.

And for some, it may not be as far away as you would imagine.

But the way that the scriptures talk about murder is not as not as something that is just like reserved for nightly news and absurd circumstances, or it's something that is uh close to our hearts.

James, another James, in uh James 4, 1 through 2, he says, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder.

If you have young children, I use this verse often, you desire and do not have.

So James is saying, and he's just writing to the church, and he he's, I don't think speaking hyperbolically, he's he sees that murder is something that's actually very close to our hearts, and that it's just on the other side of our passions waging war within us, and just on the other side of us not getting what we want.

That if we don't receive what our desires are, then just right on the other side of that is murder.

And of course, James is not innovating this, he's just drawing directly from the teaching of our Lord, who in his in uh the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, when he's expounding on the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder, he says this you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel, and whoever says, You fool, will be liable to the hell of fire.

So we should not think that this is something that is very far from us, when Jesus is murdered because of his passions waging war in his heart.

Jesus explains to us that this very commandment that you shall not murder, rightly understood, means that you shall not even harbor anger towards your brother.

That if you are harboring anger towards your brother, Jesus says you're just walking down the road to murder.

And that this can arrive in your heart actually very easily.

Now that might seem impossible to you, but I'm going to take Christ's word over yours, no offense.

He's explaining the truth of what is in our hearts.

That if we even just curse our brother, saying, You fool, Jesus says, on the other side of that, the just condemnation is the hell of fire.

This is the weight of our passions waging war in our hearts.

It seems like it might be far from us, but it's not.

It's not.

And that means that we have a responsibility to control our passions, to be in control of our desires.

And this is a very countercultural idea, because what our culture assumes is that the most real thing about you is your passions and your desires.

The scriptures teach us that these are things that are to be controlled by you, that you are accountable for and responsible over your passions and your desires.

And that if you do not take control over them, then it will lead to murder.

It will lead to death and destruction.

There will be a wake of death and destruction behind you.

So we'll follow this pattern as we see envy play out with the chief priests over against Christ.

And we'll see that result in his murder.

But we'll also see this tied up in this strange story with a convicted murderer named Barabbas.

And we'll see how those stories between the convicted murderer and the innocent one and the envy of the chief priests, which stokes the envy of the crowds, result in this strange exchange of the innocent for a murderer.

And then we'll see that something deeply wonderful and mysterious takes place in that strange exchange.

So in Mark 15, 6 through 7, says, Now at the feast, he used to release for them one prisoner whom they asked.

He is Pilate.

Pontius Pilate.

He used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.

And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas.

So there's a bit that's taken place in between what we looked at last week, which was Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.

There's a part that Mark leaves out because it doesn't uh uh change the outcome at all.

But Pilate sees one of the uh Jews says that uh Jesus is a Galilean.

And Pilate thinks, perfect, Galilee is out of my jurisdiction.

And remember, Pilate, this whole time, all that he's trying to do is not make a decision about Jesus.

All he wants to do is just get rid of this problem that has approached him.

And so he hears that Jesus is Galilean and he thinks that's that's Herod's territory.

I don't really like Herod anyway.

And so I'm gonna send Jesus over to Herod.

Well, what happens is Herod interrogates Jesus as well, and he finds nothing, and then sends Jesus right back to Pilate.

Uh, and so it accomplishes nothing.

Although, you know, Herod and Pilate do become friends after this.

Um, not entirely nothing, you know, it's nice to make a friend.

So after that, Pilate, Jesus now has this um, excuse me, Pilate now has the Jesus problem back on his doorstep.

The morning is growing later, the crowds are gathering around, and they're gathering in large part because there was a custom during the Passover that there was a man who would be released during the Passover.

Now, this uh that is the uh Roman authorities would take someone that they had in prison, and during the Passover, as a way to appeal to the crowds or satisfy the crowds in some way, they would release and pardon one of their prisoners.

Now, this is probably a foolish practice because criminals should be punished.

And uh it being a holiday is not a is is not a good reason to not punish criminals.

Basically, what uh what Pilate is doing there is he's reinforcing this idea that there is no justice in his governing.

There is only this power dynamic with the crowd, where he appeases them in some ways and then and then uh punishes them in other ways.

And what he's teaching the crowds over and over again is you're just gonna have to figure out ways to corner me and appease me.

And so it's not good for criminals to not be punished because it's a holiday uh for political purposes.

Likewise, it's not good for criminals to be punished if it's a holiday for political purposes.

Um, there should be justice.

But that's not what takes place in Pilate's, under Pilate's governance.

And so Mark introduces us this character named Barabbas.

And this is one of those famous uh secondary characters in scripture.

Uh he's got a great name.

It sounds like a, I think like when when I picture Barabbas, maybe from like uh children's Bibles and things, I hear like Barabbas is a scary villainous man, and you I picture him as like this this ogre monster type of creature.

Uh yeah, I go that laugh is like, just you, James.

You're the only one who That's what I heard.

I feel very alone up here.

And his name is used repeatedly throughout the story.

That's not typical of uh these other these sort of side characters in the scripture, but we we really get the sense that we know we know Barabbas.

We're told his name over and over again throughout the story.

And he's introduced as a murderer.

He committed a murder during the insurrection.

Now, unfortunately, what exactly the insurrection is has been lost to history.

We don't know precisely what the event was that in which Barabbas committed murder, but there were numerous uprisings by the Jewish zealots during this time who were seeking to gather together people to overthrow their Roman occupation.

And uh Barabbas was a part of one of those.

The final uprising of the Jews against their Roman occupation won't take place for another 40 years, and it will end in destruction and disaster.

But there were numerous ones that took place, and so the zealots were a uh they were an active sort of political contingent contingent among the Jews.

Barabbas was one of those, and so during one of the uprisings, he unlawfully murdered someone, likely a Roman.

And with this background of Barabbas the murderer, who is convicted, in this background that there is this uh uh process by which during the holiday, uh, or this tradition by which during the holiday Pilate would release one of the prisoners to them.

Well, now you can see how the story's going to unfold.

Mark 15, 8 through 9, it continues, and the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them, which was to release one of the prisoners.

And so Pilate, in verse 9, it says, and he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?

Pilate is taking any opportunity he can to not condemn Jesus.

He is trying with with uh any political maneuvering he can imagine by going back to the chief priest and saying, Don't you see he's innocent, by sending him over to Herod, and then Herod being like, Nope, not mine, sending him back.

And then finally, with this opportunity of the tradition of handing back over somebody who's convicted, he is appealing to the Jews and saying, I've got an idea.

You guys haven't presented anybody yet.

Why don't I go first and I'll present who I think you should set free, who I should set free to you?

It's the king of the Jews.

Now, partially, there is a dynamic going on where if he really wanted to just play things so that he would just get rid of Jesus, he probably wouldn't have referred to him in that moment as the king of the Jews.

Because this is a very provocative way to refer to Jesus.

They hate Jesus, they do not think of him as their king, but Pilate, throughout this whole interaction, only refers to him as king of the Jews.

And it is just a it is just a provocation.

There's something about this where it's like Pilate can't resist provoking them.

He can't resist provoking the crowds, and it probably cements them further into their desire to make sure that Jesus is killed.

But the text actually actually tells us precisely in the next verse in verse 10, why he refers to him as the King of the Jews.

Because it says, for he perceived it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

He calls Jesus, King of the Jews, to the face of the chief priests because Pilate knows that the only reason that Jesus is being delivered up is because of envy.

The chief priests envy Jesus.

This is the fundamental driver of them desiring to kill Jesus.

It is envy.

And Pontius Pilate himself sees that, and he can't resist provoking it and making it laid laid bare by only referring to Jesus as this title which they would hate, the reason that they would want to see him condemned as the king of the Jews.

Why do they envy Jesus?

What does it mean that the chief priests envy Jesus?

Well, of course, they envy that Jesus has gained the trust of the crowds.

After Lazarus was resurrected, which was just before them entering into Jerusalem, the chief priests are looking on and they say, Don't you see the whole world has gone after him?

They see that Jesus has the trust of the crowds.

And they're deeply envious of this because the chief priests do not have the trust of the crowds.

They have the fear of the crowds.

They have the opportunity to punish and to excommunicate individuals from the crowds, by which which they use to keep them in line.

They do not have the trust of the crowds.

They envy that Jesus is able to speak freely and with authority.

In the world that they control, Jesus is able to say exactly what he wants to say and to say it authoritatively, although they have given him no permission to speak with this authority.

And this is something that they consistently question throughout Jesus' ministry as they send people to say, by what authority are you doing this?

Or why are you able to stand up and speak these things?

What they're saying is, we haven't given you the authority to do this.

And so your ability to speak this freely shows that our authority is very thin.

And it only rests on, it does not rest on the truth, but it only rests on our ability to keep the crowds afraid.

They also envy Jesus because Jesus, as they have discovered through this trial, is not able to be controlled by threats of death.

They are not able to get him to recant his position by threatening him, even with crucifixion.

That each time that they threaten him, and when they give him opportunities to defend himself, he remains silent before them, not even trying to wriggle out of the death that they are ushering him towards.

And so why is he able to do that?

And so I think part of this is they have this deep envy of someone who seems so utterly free from their control, because they know that they can be manipulated by threats of death.

Their very position and coordination with Pontius Pilate, as it is, the fact that they're going and groveling before their Roman overlords shows that they are able to be manipulated by threats of death.

But Jesus isn't.

They are tortured by it.

And it exposes their own thin self-righteousness that they prop themselves up with.

And it exposes that their sense of place and control is all based on this ultimate fear that they can be completely manipulated by.

Because of what it exposes in Cain's own heart.

And this is part of the nature of envy.

That it makes what we're responsible for somebody else's problem.

And we hate them for it.

Now, before Cain murdered Abel, the Lord visited Cain.

And the Lord said to Cain in Genesis 4, 6 through 7, Why are you angry and why has your face fallen?

This is after Cain's offering was rejected.

It says, Why are you angry and why has your face fallen?

If you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

What God is telling Cain in these moments before his murder, this advice which Cain does not receive from the Lord, he is telling him, Abel is not responsible for you being rejected.

You are.

And when you don't retain, when you don't take responsibility for the sin in your own life, but instead you outsource it onto the righteous one, then sin will come to you.

And it will be crouching at your door.

And its desire is contrary to your own life, your own flourishing, the things that I have called you, the good things that I have called you to participate in.

Sin is contrary to that in your heart.

And you can see how it cultivates this envy and this resentment in the heart of Cain.

And that's because Cain does not take responsibility for where he sits before the Lord.

And because he doesn't take responsibility for it, he outsources it onto Abel.

And then he envies Abel for the goodness that he's received from the Lord.

He curses him for the goodness that he's received.

Don't you see that this murder that the chief priests accomplish against Jesus, that they, as in their murder of Jesus, that it is the same shape as this very first murder, were brought back to see it's the same envy.

Because they would not take responsibility for their own sin.

They see the one who has exposed it to them as the real problem.

And then this becomes the pattern of cultivating this envy against Jesus, and by that envy, they are driven to murder in the same way that Cain was driven to murder the innocent Abel.

They envy his blessedness, and they hate the sinfulness that he makes evident in their own hearts.

And so when Pilate asks them, Well, why don't I release to you the king of the Jews?

They will not receive to themselves the king of the Jews.

But instead, sin has taken root, multiplied in their hearts.

It was crouching at their door, and now it has fully invaded and is running the show of their own hearts.

So they do not receive to themselves Jesus, but they receive to themselves Barabbas, the murderer.

And you can think of this, you know, when you think of a convict being released to the people, what they're saying is, when they're choosing, they're saying, well, take the one who we will count as one of us.

The one who we think of ourselves as, the one who we will think we will be like.

And there's the righteous one that they could receive back to themselves, and there's the murderer.

And they choose, we will receive back into ourselves the murderer.

That's what we will be.

That's what we will be.

This is why pardoning is such an important thing, if you consider it just generally, because it is saying that's who we will be as a people.

So they received back to themselves Barabbas.

So in Mark 15, 11 through 13, but the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.

And Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews?

And they cried out again, crucify him.

Now there is a bit of a mystery here, because it says the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.

The chief priests know they're going to need the crowd to ultimately put enough pressure on Pilate to be able to cave so that Jesus will be murdered, which is what the chief priests want.

But aren't the crowds, weren't those the ones who weren't they the whole world that was going after Jesus?

Aren't the crowds the ones who were just a week earlier chanting and praising the arrival of the Son of David coming into the city as Jesus arrived?

Why are the crowds suddenly here chanting crucify him?

Well, I think there's a couple of answers that we can offer to this question.

One of them is that the it's not like the crowds aren't like like uh like a Greek chorus in a play where it's like they're the same people every time, you know?

It's not the way crowds work.

Crowds can be all different kinds of people at all different kinds of times, and then you can refer to them both as crowds.

So that's one way to solve the problem.

That these are just different, they're just different crowds.

And that's that's true, I think.

Like in this crowd that is against Jesus, it's a different sort of mixture.

And we see that even the crowd that follows Jesus' crucifixion is a mixed crowd.

The women who were part of Jesus' ministry follow and look to him at the cross.

We know that John is standing right next to Mary, and so some of the disciples are there as well.

There's a there's a mixture to this crowd that's taking place.

And we can also assume that the uh the group that takes part of their Passover week to go see someone pardoned and someone crucified.

This might be, you know, you know what I mean?

I think you get it.

It's like when you go to like a WWE event and it's like those folks are rowdy in there.

You know, it's like, well, yeah, you know, this is the event that we all came to.

That's one way to think of it.

But there's another element to this, and that is that the chief, the text tells us clearly that it's not just the crowds, this is not like a grassroots movement where because of the nature of the crowd, they rise up against Jesus.

This is driven by the chief priests.

And we see throughout the Gospels that the chief priests have been driving and manipulating the people the whole time.

They they uh these it so look at this in John 7, 12 through 13, for example, it says, and there was much, this is an earlier Passover, before Jesus had gone to the Passover, and crowds are just sort of standing around, and Jesus is on the tip of everyone's tongue.

It says, and there was much muttering about him among the people.

While some said he is a good man, others said, No, he is leading the people astray.

But listen to how they talked about it.

Verse 13.

Yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him.

You see, just if the chief priests are around, or if they get wind that we're just talking about him in any way, we know that there's a danger there.

And they're the ones that have power over us.

They could uh they could excommunicate us, they could threaten our very lives for talking about the person of Jesus.

They understand implicitly the threat that Jesus is to the chief priests and how the chief priests experience Jesus as a threat.

And so they've received the teachings of the chief priests, and they've all been trained this is not something we can talk about in polite company.

This is something we can whisper about together, but it's not something that we can talk about freely.

And so there's a group of people who are under control of the chief priests.

This, and because they're under control of the chief priests, they themselves do not speak freely.

They do not speak in accord with the truth.

The culture of these crowds has been formed to not speak in accord with the truth, but to speak in accord with the training that their leaders have given them.

So that is the nature of the crowds and their relationship to the chief priests.

Also, in John 9 22, after this wild story of Jesus healing a man who is born blind, the man kind of dips and goes and talks with Jesus for a little while, and the but he's talking about Jesus, and so he stirs up this controversy in the synagogue, and the uh Jews gather together and they interrogate this man's parents, the man who was just healed from being blind from birth, his parents.

And his parents say, Why don't you just go talk to him?

He was the one who was blind.

As a way of saying, but what they're really saying is we don't want, just because our son was healed by Jesus, we don't think of us as like those Jesus folks.

You know, we're we're regular old folk, synagogue attending good old folks just like you.

We know how to talk in polite company, and uh we don't want to get caught up in this whole thing.

We're not gonna, we're not gonna take a stand either for or against this Jesus character.

So his parents said in the commentary that John gives us is in verse chapter 9, verse 22, it says, His parents said these things because they feared the Jews.

For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

So how deep is this fear?

These parents, their own son, was just healed by Jesus, but for fear of being put out of the synagogue, they would not honor Jesus in front of them.

Look at how deep the control and fear of the chief priest that has been cultivated here.

What we see here is that they have not been taught by the chief priests, which is what the chief priests ought to have done.

They have been trained by the chief priests.

And their training has not oriented them towards the truth, their training has oriented them towards what is acceptable in polite company.

What is it that you are able to say with a full voice?

And what is it that must be hidden?

They are not oriented towards the truth.

They are oriented towards their training because they have been manipulated by the chief priests who have trained them to not speak freely, to not honor the truths of God in public, but to only honor that which would be acceptable in the synagogue.

Now I think that there is always an envy cultivated within those who are silenced and know that they are being silenced.

There is always an envy cultivated towards those that they see able to speak freely.

Always.

And here's what it sounds like.

If you want to be able to smell it out oftentimes, I don't mind so much what was said, but the tone.

You know?

That's one way that it's said.

And so the chief priests know that the crowds also envy the freedom that Jesus is showing.

Jesus, unlike them, he can't be steered by threats of being ostracized from the synagogue.

He's been kicked out before.

Remember early in his ministry, when the leper comes up and asks to be healed, Jesus heals the leper and he touches him.

And at his healing of the of the of the leper, the the leper is able, now that he's clean, he's able to return to the people, to no longer be ostracized.

But the cost of that for Christ, as the crowds surround him and push him out, is that Christ would be ostracized from the people.

So what is the what type of person is Jesus?

Well, he he seems like the type of person who is willing to do what is right for the ones who are ostracized, even if it means him being ostracized.

He's fearless.

Well, what does it mean when we threaten, when he's threatened with death?

He doesn't seem to fear death.

He seems to think that that God is the type of God who would honor the righteous one even unto death and even beyond death.

He can't be steered.

So the envy and the resentment of the freedom of Jesus is already within the crowds.

And the chief priests know that this is something that they can just tap at any moment.

That they'll be able to stoke the crowds, the envy that's present in them, because it's the same envy as theirs.

This one's free.

His freedom exposes that we are enslaved and cowardly.

It shows that to us more clearly than anyone else.

So now they're in a Cain situation.

And the Cain situation is the righteous one exposes my own sinfulness.

God says, take responsibility for your own sinfulness.

Rule over your passions and your desires.

Rule over your desire for peace and security.

Rule over the fear that is controlling you that causes you to dishonor God by not speaking the truth where it ought to be spoken.

Rule over those passions and desires.

Otherwise, the sin will control you.

And it's its desire is contrary to you.

It leads you to a life of slavery and fear that is easily tapped and manipulated.

Look, by these own people who you know don't have your your best intentions in mind.

You're able to just be manipulated and taken advantage of by them.

God says that, but the crowd say instead, crucify him.

He's the problem.

If we get rid of him, then there's nobody here to show us that we're doing anything wrong.

There's no courageous person to expose our weakness.

There is no person who is mastering their passions to show us that we are enslaved to them.

And so if we get rid of him, then we can all go back to the synagogue together.

Isn't what the parents say?

The parents of the man who is healed, who is blind, his parents said this for fear of the Jews.

They'd already agreed that if anyone should confess Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

Doesn't that feel just like this horrible country club logic, you know?

You can see it in those terms, but gosh, isn't this what we do?

Isn't that what we're like?

Like, isn't the aren't we?

One way one way to see this is can you celebrate a friend conquering a sin that you also struggle with?

Could you see them having having victory over that same area of your life that that you also struggle with?

And instead of instead of telling some story to gain some to cultivate some resentment towards them, could you say, Praise the Lord?

Praise the Lord.

I I want things to go well for my brothers and sisters.

Yeah, perhaps I haven't matured in that same way or attained this same thing yet.

I trust the Lord.

He he will provide for me, he won't abandon me, he'll be with me, but I could celebrate the victory that I see in my friends.

I think that's a I think that's a helpful test.

All right, and Pilate said to them, Why?

What evil has he done?

But they shouted all the more, crucify him.

They know that they cannot provide any answer because there is no answer.

There is nothing in Jesus that deserves his crucifixion.

It is only their envy, which is in them, which is driving the crucifixion of Jesus.

So they don't offer an answer.

There's no answer to Pilate's why.

It's just louder and louder.

Crucify him, crucify him, crucify him.

And then finally, another way to the way to see that chant of crucify him, crucify him, crucify him, their passions are completely unchecked.

Their passions waged war within them, and they surrendered.

Mark 15, 15.

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

He desires to satisfy the crowd.

Pilate, this is the strange dynamic of like a system of governance that has no truth involved.

You know, of course, you can see that in any system, you can see that in your family.

You know, when there's not truth involved, and there's not like a moral structure that we're appealing to here, then it just becomes these horrible dynamics.

You guys know about family dynamics?

It becomes like that.

Yeah.

I've said it before.

I think we're experiencing something of a dynamic.

That happens in my family sometimes.

And because of that, Pilate just becomes one of the crowd.

It is his responsibility to make a right judgment that is based on right things, based on the truth, as far as he can see it.

But instead, he just submits to the pressure of the crowd.

Because he understands that he's just like them too.

He also is not governing based on truth.

He's governing based on his own envy.

And he sees the chief priests and the crowds now aligned with the chief priests.

And he says, I'll join in that scapegoating so that we can feel united together.

It is not a true unity.

It is an envy based on unity based on envy and resentment.

And so we see a plain evil on the part of the chief priests in the crowds.

We see a pure injustice on the part of Pilate.

And we see this unthinkable, this amazingly clear picture of the grace and kindness and justice and mercy of God in this glorious image of the gospel, which takes place right in this moment as Jesus is chosen to head for the cross and Barabbas is freed.

Because picture Barabbas later that week.

And you run into him.

And you know, he seems like he's in a pretty good mood, a little confused.

It's been a rough, you know, several months since he got caught up in the whole insurrection game.

Runs into an old friend.

You still in that?

No, man, I'm trying to get out of the insurrection game.

And then Barabbas, and he says, Well, why are you, you know, I remember reading, and I thought, you know, at the end of last week you had, I don't know, different plans.

And yet you're here.

All Barabbas could say was, there was another man.

There was an innocent man, actually.

And because the innocent man went to the cross, I was freed.

You could probably, if given enough time, and it was maybe on like a I don't know, like a one of those like New York Times riddles things that they do, you could probably figure out what Barabbas means.

We could probably do it together.

Have you heard Simon Bar Jonah?

What do you think the bar means?

Son.

Yeah.

And then when Jesus prays to the Father, he cries out, what?

Abba, Father.

Bar Abba.

Son of the Father.

That's Barabbas' name.

His name is Son of the Father.

Now, granted, it's a bit of a catch-all.

Which is an old Seinfeld joke for those of you who are in deep Seinfeld.

Son of the Father.

But of course it means that he's the son of the Father.

Why is Barabbas' name said over and over again?

Many other characters are not said over and over again.

It's because Mark is trying to show us that it's like, you know what we have here?

We have the son of the father, then we have the true son of the father.

And it's almost like we've got brothers.

And we've got one innocent brother.

And one brother who's a murderer.

And because of this dynamic, and the innocent brother is murdered by envy.

And the one who is the murderer goes on and lives.

It's like we've returned to that first murder that takes place among the brothers.

And in Genesis 4, 9 through 11, after the murder takes place, it says, Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother?

He said, I do not know.

Am I my brother's keeper?

And the Lord said, What have you done?

The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

You know, it's just like that first murder.

But there's a difference.

In that first murder, the innocent one is killed.

But as that innocent one is killed, as Abel is killed, his blood cries out in the only way that the blood that is not a true, perfect sacrifice to the Lord, can cry out.

And as Abel's blood cries out, it cries out and results in the cursing of Cain.

But in Hebrews 12, 24, describes that we now come to Jesus.

To Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Because Christ's blood, the innocent sufferer, when his is poured out, it speaks to us that we can be called sons of God.

That because he went to the cross, we, like Barabbas, can be set free.

Set free from the fear of death, from the fear of being cast out, which has made us prone to all kinds of manipulation, all kinds of cowardice, all kinds of surrendering to our passions that are waging war against us.

We can be set free from that because Christ went to the cross.

That his blood cries out a better word than Abel.

His blood cries out, you are forgiven and atoned for, and you go free like Barabbas.

Although you were the murderer, the responsibility for your sin has been taken by Christ.

And so you can say clearly, I lived in sin against the Father.

But because the innocent brother went to the cross, I can be called again a true son of the Father.

And so I can cry out to the Father now.

His blood cries out a different cry.

But a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

And the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are sons of God.

Now, why could you say that your name is Barabbas?

Son of the Father.

You could say that that was your name for the same reason that Barabbas could still say his name later that week.

It's because the innocent one went to the cross on your behalf.

Because his grace has been poured out on you.

Because he was willing to go to the death that you deserved, so that you might be set free.

And we come to him whose blood has been shed on our behalf, and his blood does not cry out for our condemnation, but his blood makes us true sons of God our Father, just like he is.

How could we praise the one who went to the cross so that we might be set free?

How much of his life do we deserve?

How much of the courage do we owe him?

He gave it all.

Probably as m at least as much as Barabbasod.

At least that much.

All right.

Are there any questions today?

Great.

Not great.

It might be reinforcing the wrong thing.

It's great to have questions.

In 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse 23, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So he took the bread and he broke it.

And he said, This is his body, which is broken for us.

And he took the cup and he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Now what we remember when we come to this feast together that Christ calls us to is that it is a proclamation.

We proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

But as we proclaim the Lord's death, we do not proclaim the Lord's death, we do not come to eat of his body and drink of his blood, as we might have come to the body in the blood of Abel, that first innocent sufferer who was wrongfully murdered.

That body and blood only testifies to our condemnation.

But there was another innocent sufferer who came on our behalf, and he offered his body and his blood.

It was not taken from him, he laid it down freely.

And so what we receive from him as we come to his body and blood is the testimony that his blood has covered our sins.

That in his death we need not fear death.

We need not fear being ostracized.

We need not fear being cast out.

We are brought into the truest family, able to call Jesus Christ our older brother, to call his father our father.

This is the wonder of the cross.

He goes right to that place of that first horrible murder, and he flips it on its head.

And by taking it upon himself, he pours out his grace onto his people.

Let's feast and enjoy what that type of a Lord calls us to.

A life of freedom and grace in him.

It's available to you.

It's available to you.

Your sins have been atoned for in him.

Come celebrate Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Holy Father, we praise you for your loving kindness.

We praise you for sending your Son.

We praise you for the wonder of the cross and what we see and what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us.

Lord, how our flesh longs to say that there is a reason that you have forgiven and justified and brought us in.

We want to say that there's something in ourselves that ought to, that deserves somehow that grace.

But there is as much in ourselves that deserves this grace as there was in Jesus that deserved his crucifixion.

And Lord, you freely offered yourself to that crucifixion so that we might freely receive your grace and mercy.

Lord, we cannot receive this but by your spirit.

Our flesh will not receive something so wonderful and so glorious and so free.

Lord, equip us by your spirit to be able to see and wonder at the grace you have shown us, the forgiveness we've received, by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, Amen.