Sunday 03 • 08 • 20

Good morning everyone! Saying good morning does not spread the coronavirus. Let's try that again. Good morning everyone!

My name is James Sutton. I'm the associate pastor here and we have been going through a series called Witnesses of the Cross. I want to tell you about my new favorite movie. It's taken me a little while to get to the point where I will admit that this is my favorite movie. Understand that this is a big commitment for me. I'm rejecting Star Wars and other movies that I love very much. But my favorite movie in the whole world right now is the movie Knives Out.

Knives Out is an incredible murder mystery. I'm not gonna ruin anything about it. It features Daniel Craig as the lead investigator, a character named Benoit Blanc. He's from the Deep South, and he describes his investigative process in the movie, and I love his description. He says, "I'm not one of those investigators who dig or scratch to find the truth. I purvey, I stroll leisurely through an arc of the circumstances and the witnesses and at the end of my stroll, the truth lays itself at my feet."

Throughout the movie, as he figures out different pieces, the case becomes increasingly complex. So he no longer calls it an arc. At some point, he refers to it as a donut—because there's a hole in the middle and he's trying to figure out what the donut hole is. That process of perusing, walking leisurely through the facts of a case—that's what we're doing. We are looking at the story of the cross, walking through the narrative of what happened to Christ in the last week of his life.

To review, we've gotten several different eyewitness reports from the different gospels. We started with the arrest in the garden from the gospel of John several weeks ago. Then we looked at the trial before the Sanhedrin and Peter's denying of Christ from the gospel of Matthew. Last week, we looked at Jesus before Pilate in the gospel of John. This Sunday, we're gonna look at Pilate, Herod, the crowd, and Barabbas from the gospel of Luke. We're gonna read Luke 23:1-25. The version on the screen behind me is the right one.

Scripture Reading

Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate, and they began to accuse him saying, "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king." So Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?" "You have said so," Jesus replied. Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man." But they insisted, "He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here."

On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. When he learned that Jesus was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there vehemently accusing him. Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became friends. Before this, they had been enemies.

Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people and said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. As you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him." But the whole crowd shouted, "Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us." Barabbas had been thrown into prison for insurrection in the city and for murder.

Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again, but they kept shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" For the third time, he spoke to them, "Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore, I will have him punished and then release him." — Luke 23:1-25

But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for and surrendered Jesus to their will.

Alright. Great job. You know, it may seem as we're going through this series, if it does seem this way to me as well, that there's an enormous amount of time in the last week of Christ's life spent on the trial. Right? We've been in the trial now for several weeks. Trial before the priest, trial before Pilate, trial before Herod, trial before the people, right? In fact, if you look at the gospels as a whole and parse out what all the stories are about, there's an inordinate amount of the gospels that deal with Jesus's trial, and it actually makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, the gospel writers were writing in a time when Christianity was on trial. They were on trial, right? And so looking back to our Lord and Savior's trial—not only how he carried himself through that, but how he was the hope that they had in the midst of trial—would have been incredibly important to them, right?

And we've experienced this some too, right? I mean, if you think about the church over thousands of years, for thousands of years Christ has been on trial. Every new generation that comes essentially puts Christ on trial. Is he who he said he is? Is he valuable? Is he worth it?

This past week was a kind of tough week for me. I had some good friends. We went to college together. We were part of a bigger friend group within Campus Crusade at NC State. They were leaders in Campus Crusade and they were really funny people. I really liked them. We connected on humor because I like all things funny. And they went on staff with Crusade as comedians for Campus Crusade. They would go and do comedy to attract students and then share the gospel with them. That's what they did for Campus Crusade. And I actually supported them financially while they were living in Raleigh. They actually came to this church a couple of times. They would visit because of their friendship with members that were here.

But not long after that, their comedy took them places. They were so funny. They started posting things on the internet and developed a following. They won a competition. They got some money from that competition. And with that money, they launched an internet comedy professional career. So my friends are Rhett and Link. If you know them, they're kind of big on the internet. They've been featured on various different talk shows. If you talk to a lot of younger people who surf YouTube twenty-four seven, they probably run into Rhett and Link. They've been in a couple of music videos. They're kind of a big deal.

But this last week, the reason it's been hard for me is in a very personal and, I think, vulnerable display on their part. They got on their vlog, and over the period of an hour and a half, they shared the deconstruction of their Christian faith. They essentially very publicly and personally walked away from Christ. And I will say I think that was very painful for them. They were not being flippant. They displayed how they had thought about this for a long time, and listening to a friend for an hour and a half talk about how they're walking away from Jesus—it's really painful for me.

Jesus is on trial even now, right? Jesus is on trial even now. People are evaluating whether or not it's worth it to follow him. And many of them are people we know. Our generation, our time, our place. People are evaluating and looking at Christ. This passage points us to the reality of that in Christ's own time as well as giving us encouragement for our time.

Four Figures in Christ's Trial

So we're going to look at four things today in the trial of Christ. Four people really, or groups of people. We're going to look at Pilate. Yeah, we're going to look at him again. You're also going to get more of him next week. So just enjoy that. Three weeks of Pilate. We're going to look at Pilate. We're going to look at Herod. We're going to look at the crowd, and we're going to conclude by looking at Barabbas. Alright? Pilate, Herod, the crowd, Barabbas. Simple outline.

Alright, let's start with Pilate. Pilate—it's interesting. Like, if you can read the gospels and you know, if there's somebody that you kind of relate to, right, or in the trial of Jesus, it's probably Pilate, right? Because he seems kind of reluctant, doesn't he? Right? Like, for example, in Luke's presentation of his involvement in this, did you notice that Pilate went to the crowd three times? Three times. Is that significant?

You see the number three sometimes in the gospel? Did we see it recently with Peter in any context, class? Yeah. Peter—Jesus is like disciple denies him three times. Pilate, the outsider, Roman governor, goes and actually, on behalf of Jesus to the crowd and appeals to them three times. So you can see where you kind of want to like Pilate a little bit, right? But what I want you to see and what Luke wants you to see is that Pilate is not innocent in this, right? Pilate is not clean in essentially the death of Christ. Pilate does not care about Jesus.

You see this in a number of different ways in this gospel presentation and throughout the gospel's presentation of him. First of all, you gotta understand with Pilate, right? We've just looked at the high priest and that trial, right? And the charge was all about religious heresy, right? Essentially, now the charges are shifting, right? Because the priests are trying to shift it to a political charge, right? It's no longer that he's guilty of heresy. It's more that he is an insurrectionist. He is rebelling against Caesar, right?

Do you notice that at the beginning of this passage? It's a political charge. Pilate's response to Jesus being any kind of threat to Caesar is that he kind of just shrugs it off. He's like, this guy? This guy is a threat, right? It's just a very brief exchange. "So you're the king of the Jews?" Jesus like, "Yeah, you said it." And he's just kind of like, "I see no problem with this guy, right?" This is a man who has 12 followers. One of them betrayed him. The other one has a sword and can chop off people's ears but runs away when anybody directly confronts him three times, right? This is not a threat to Caesar. I command thousands of troops. This man is not someone who is going to challenge me or Julius Caesar. This guy is laughable. He is not worth my time. Take him back. This is your problem, right? That's Pilate's response to Jesus. He doesn't see him as important or valuable or any kind of real threat, right?

Pilate's Political Indifference

Another way that you can see that is in the exchange with Herod, right? Pilate hands Jesus off to Herod. You gotta understand, Pilate and Herod did not like each other. The passage kind of clues us into that, right? They didn't like each other. They were kind of political rivals. They were vying for political power within the system of the Roman Empire. Herod had control of some areas and Pilate had control of other areas and they were kind of jockeying for favor.

If Jesus was a real threat and Pilate put him down, that would have risen his political stock, right? If Jesus was something valuable, something interesting, something intriguing, and he brought him to Caesar, that would have risen Pilate's political stock. But what does Pilate do? He says, "I don't have time for this guy. Send him to Herod, right?" And off he goes.

And you also see it in the way back, right? When Herod sends him back, beaten and with the robes, you know, now all of a sudden, they're friends. You know why? Because they've shared in a joke. They shared in a joke. "This guy is a king. We're the real kings, right? Oh yeah, you're pretty funny. You're alright, Herod. I take back what I said about you, right?" That is that exchange, but do you see the disdain for Jesus in that?

You also see it in that he gives into the crowd, of course, right? He knows he's innocent. He's not threatened by him. He knows what's going on and he goes three times and that's really good. That's his symbol of completeness in scripture, right? He's really arguing that he's really innocent. But then at the end of the day, what does he do? He doesn't stand up to the crowd.

And I'd submit to you that Herod, who commands a thousand troops, is not afraid of a Jewish crowd. In fact, Herod kind of doesn't like the Jews, right? As a Roman, he would love to pick a fight with a crowd and just massacre all of them. He would have loved to have done that. But you know what? This isn't worth his time. And so when they insist, he's like, "What? Fine. Whatever. Just leave me alone." And he lets him die.

Jesus was judged by Pilate not to be guilty of insurrection or murder or anything significant, but he was judged as not worth it. Uninteresting.

You know, the heartbreaking thing about my friend's anti-testimony, I guess, was at one point he talks about how their career led them from Raleigh to LA and that they started to feel kind of disconnected from Christian community. Where he describes their, you know, some of the web of those relationships made him feel like, "Hey, I need to keep owning this because other people are expecting it of me, right?" But then I got out to LA, right? I was away from family.

There was no pressure like that, and I started really diving into some of these real legitimate concerns and questions that I had. And to defend him, listen, I'm not attacking him. I think he wrestled. I'm not trying to say he was glib in this, but once he was detached from that, what he said that breaks my heart is he said, "If I got here, what I realized is, I didn't have to believe this. I didn't have to believe in Jesus." And his question was, "And if I didn't have to believe in Jesus, then why would I?" That is a heartbreaking moment in his testimony. He judged Jesus as not worth it in and of himself.

It's exactly what Pilate does. And brothers and sisters, I would submit that it's not just my friend, it's not just the outside world, but it's also us who frequently judge Jesus as not worth our time. It's not that we think he's bad or that we don't like him. It's that we have bigger, more important things to do. And that was the position of Pilate. So much so that he's guilty of murder. He handed Jesus over to the crowd because he didn't have time for him. And I would submit that that's something that we do frequently and often in our hearts.

Herod

Let's move on and look at Herod. Who is Herod? Well, there's lots of Herods in the Bible. So let me begin with the Wikipedia disambiguation. Is that the term—disambiguation? There was Herod the Great, right? You remember him? He's at the beginning of the gospels. He's a really nice guy, right? Kills all those babies, right? He's the one that the wise men come to. Terrible dude, right? Terrible dude. Well, he was a little self-consumed. He had lots of sons and their names were Herod, right? "I'm Herod. This is my son Herod and my other son Herod, right?" So a lot of times in the Bible, you hear Herod and it's kind of like, "Wait, which Herod is this?" Well, this is Herod Antipas, right? Herod's son. He basically inherited a quarter of his father's kingdom, right? So he's called Herod the Tetrarch because he rules the area of Galilee, you know, where Jesus grew up, right? That's the Herod. He also is a really great guy. He's the one that beheaded John the Baptist, for example. You could argue that it was his rough upbringing, his dad issues probably that led to his misbehavior, but he's a terrible person. Bottom line, this is who Pilate hands Jesus over to.

And unlike Pilate, Herod is kind of interested in Jesus. Did you notice that in the text? He's like, "Cool. I've been wanting to hang out with this guy, right? I hear he's a magician." And so Jesus comes in and he's ready. He's like, "I want to see. I want to see your science fiction, Jesus. I want to see what kind of crazy stuff you do."

Herod's approach to Jesus is he's looking for entertainment, right? He's ready to be amazed at Jesus. And he asks him, "Hey, Jesus, amaze me." And again and again, he's trying to get him to do something, and Jesus just won't do it, right? Jesus is silent through the whole exchange with Herod.

Now, I want you to notice something. Jesus's silence is incredibly significant. Anytime Jesus is silent, that's important. In fact, Paul and I were up in Pennsylvania this week. We were at the Reformed Youth Ministries Conference and we got to hang out with a guy named Paul Miller. Some of you know he does a curriculum called See Jesus, and we did some Bible studies with Paul Miller, which was really cool. We were looking at other parts of scripture in the gospels, and one of the things that he really pointed to in this other passage was just like, anytime Jesus is quiet, it's incredibly significant. It is meant to create an anticipation, an attention of "What is he doing, right?" Do you feel that tension with Jesus being silent in front of Herod, right? That's important. Hang on to that. We're going to come back to it, but his silence, among other things, communicates to Herod, "Hey, I am not your monkey. I don't perform on command, right? That's not what I am here for, right? I am not subject to your kind of whims of entertainment."

And Herod, of course, his response to that is not very positive. He's like, "All right, fine. You're not going to do sci-fi?" Herod pulls out the remote, pulls up Netflix, switches it from sci-fi to comedy, right? "If you're not going to entertain me with the science fiction, I am going to mock you and I'm going to have a good laugh at your expense." And that's what he does. Mocks Jesus, has his soldiers beat him, puts him in a robe, makes him the laughingstock. "Look, this great king."

Now, this, of course, is how a lot of people respond to Jesus.

It's like they're interested and they come and they're kind of like, "Hey, what's this all about? I hear you do amazing things. I've heard that you've done really great things and I want in. I want you to do great things for me, right?" And they come into the church and they pray and they're like, "Hey, Jesus, do this thing. Whatever it is, right?"

And then it doesn't happen and they turn. It's kind of like, "Yeah, Jesus, maybe great, whatever, but he doesn't work for me, right? He didn't work for me. I tried it. I tried Jesus." Herod could have been talking to Pilate like weeks after. "You know, I tried Jesus. He didn't work. And so I turned on him and I made fun of him. He worked for me in that way. It was fun to make fun of him."

A lot of the world responds to Jesus that way. But again, I want you to pause and think about how you respond to Jesus in that way, because we do. Even as believers, even as those who recognize the infinite value of Jesus, even those of us who recognize him as king—our king—and submit to him from time to time, we get it backwards and we start to think he works for us, right? We approach things with this expectation of, "Is he going to do it for me today?"

I see that all the time in the church. Most frequently in my heart, right? Like we go to different worship services. I go to a conference in Pennsylvania and I'm like, "Is Jesus going to do it for me this week? How does this compare to this other conference that I went to?" Oh, this one wasn't as great. So it wasn't as magical.

We do this with worship services, right? You ever come out of a worship service and go, "I don't know. That just didn't do it for me," right? As though it's for us. Or the sermons. This is a great point to make when you're preaching, right? Because it prevents you from criticizing my sermon. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying you can't evaluate things in terms of their beauty and their worth and those sorts of things. That's important to do. We do that and that's important, but sometimes our heart gets in the wrong place and we get switched, kind of like Herod, right? And we start to think, "Is Jesus working for us?"

Herod in his assessment of Jesus is not that he was guilty of insurrection, but he was guilty of not doing it for him. He was guilty of not being entertaining. And often times people walk away from the faith or run away from Christ because of that reason. Jesus is still on trial, right?

The Crowd's Choice

Well, let's look at the crowd. Who is the crowd? We got a mob, right? It's mostly like the chief priests and the rulers—the Jewish leaders—but then also a bunch of other people. It's a big crowd of people clamoring for Jesus' blood, right? From the other gospels we know that it was initially Pilate who offered them the choice of Jesus or Barabbas. In Luke's gospel we just get the crowd's response, but Pilate did offer them the choice. And it's a very stark and ironic choice, isn't it?

You got Barabbas, who's a murdering revolutionary, and then you have the peaceful, rightful king. If you've grown up in the church and have any kind of appreciation for Christ, it might be really hard for you to get your head around like, why would the crowd pick the murderer, right? I was thinking about this. It's kind of hard to think about. I understand maybe the chief priests and the law, but what about the rest of the crowd? Why would they pick the murderer?

Well, here's the thing. Let me set the scene. Walk with me. Jesus is beaten, bleeding, in a purple robe. Right? He looks pathetic. He looks terrible. And Pilate says, "Hey, guys, do you want your king?" And then on the other hand, you have a revolutionary who has stood up to Rome and actually caused an insurrection and is willing to fight and kill people. Do you see the choice? Do you see why? Choosing Jesus is accepting Pilate's mockery, right? Imagine if that choice was presented to you. Would you choose the suffering Jesus over the revolutionary activist? That's a hard choice.

Luke wants us to know that the crowd will never ever choose Jesus. That crowd will never choose Jesus. As we walk through the world, the crowd will never pick Jesus. He is ugly and beaten and bruised, and his suffering is just unattractive to the natural world, right? That's not who you want as a king naturally, right? The crowd would never pick Jesus.

We can identify with the crowd, right? But they're guilty of murder. They know that Jesus is innocent. They know that he's done nothing wrong.

They know that he's experiencing abuse and injustice and yet, they choose this guy because he's the kind of revolutionary they want. He's the one who's going to bring about all their immediate hopes and desires they think.

We talk a lot about C.S. Lewis. He's kind of like a patron saint probably of protestants. I don't know. We don't have patron saints. But you hear a lot about the Chronicles of Narnia. But C.S. Lewis also wrote this really weird space trilogy. I love the space trilogy, man. It is so weird. If you ever read it, just brace yourself for the weirdness. I don't have time to go into it. But in the third book, there's kind of this sequence where there's this organization, this nefarious organization that is at work called the NICE. I don't even really remember what it stands for. But the NICE, they're this nefarious organization and they control the media. They control like the government. They're like totally orchestrating all things to work against the protagonist, right? The people that represent Christians, right? In the third book and they're always kind of like working.

You know, I always think that the internet is the NICE. Not because I think there's conspiracies on the internet. There probably are. But it's not that I think that there's a conspiracy on the internet. Here's the conspiracy: it's our depravity. The internet is the display of our depravity and as it works itself out in some sort of collective soup, guess what? The crowd will never pick Jesus. Now there are people on the internet that pick Jesus, but my point is, as we walk through this life, the expectation should be the rejection of Christ in this world. The crowd is always going to reject Christ because we as a human species, guess what? We're guilty of murder. Just like the crowd here is guilty of murder.

Barabbas

Well, let's look at Barabbas, our last point. You know, Barabbas is really fascinating in this text. He's fascinating in the gospels. I've become really fascinated with him in the last week while studying this. There is woven within this story, this very subtle invitation for you to identify Barabbas with Christ. Do you know that? You probably don't see it. Let me pull it out for you. But first, that's crazy, right? The contrast between Barabbas and Christ are what hit us in the face. Alright, so let's play some classroom participation. I'll say what Barabbas is. You say what Jesus is. It's the opposite. Okay? Ready? Here we go.

Barabbas is guilty. Christ is? Innocent, not guilty. Good job. Okay? Barabbas is a killer. Christ is? He's the sacrifice. He's the savior. He's the author of life. I heard a bunch of things. Very good. All of those things are correct. The opposite of killing. Barabbas is a revolutionary traitor. Jesus is loyal, rightful king. I heard a bunch of things. All those things are right. Good job. Right? Whatever Barabbas is, Jesus is the opposite. Do you see that?

So why would I say that there's an invitation to identify Christ with Barabbas? Well, did you know that in the earliest manuscripts, it includes another name with Barabbas, Yeshua. Jesus. Barabbas' name was Jesus. The reason scholars think that it was removed from the earliest manuscripts was because the early church had a very strong reaction to this. Origin, one of the early church fathers, noticed this and in his commentary, he talks about how terrible that is. Jesus should never be associated with such a vile murderer. Right? And so they didn't want that. They didn't like that. And yet, there's this invitation, right?

Jesus, Yeshua, which means god saves by the way, Barabbas, which by the way means son of the father, right? So you have Jesus, the son of the father, and Jesus, the son of the father. And the two couldn't be anymore different. Do you see where we're going?

Do you also notice that there's a subtle invitation in this passage to not only identify Barabbas with Jesus but also to identify Barabbas with other characters in the story? Right? Barabbas is convicted of murder. Right? Walk with me as we trace the donut hole. We walk around the doughnut hole and we discover that inside of the doughnut hole is another doughnut hole. Here's the truth that this text is leading us to. Barabbas isn't the only murderer in the story. Pilate is a murderer. Herod is a murderer. The crowd is a murderer. And where is Luke leading us with all of this? You see it in volume two. Luke part two called Acts.

Acts chapter three, Peter gets up drunk with the Holy Spirit, right? After Pentecost and he comes out and he says, all y'all killed Jesus. We're the murderers in the story.

You see what's happening here? For those who have eyes to see, for those who are wandering the donut path, to see the donut hole within the donut hole.

We have here a very clear picture of our propitiation in Christ. The exchange of the criminal for Jesus. Imagine what it was like to be Barabbas. Can you imagine what it was like to be Barabbas in the cell hearing "crucify him, crucify him," thinking that they're talking about you, then you get out and what do you find? There's Jesus and he's going to the cross in your place.

Brothers and sisters, that's what it means to be in Christ. To be identified as a murderer but to be identified with the righteous Son of God and to take his righteousness upon ourselves while he goes to the cross.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might be the very righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:21

Luke also clues us in to this thing where it feels as you're reading this, doesn't it, like there's just nefarious forces at work behind Pilate and Herod and the crowd. It seems like it's all culminating in this nice conspiracy, right? Because it is. Satan is at work through all of this and at the end in verse 25:

He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will. — Luke 23:25

If you'd been reading all of Luke, you would notice that the term "will"—which should set off alarms. Jesus in contrast to Pilate. Pilate releases Jesus to their will, to the will of the world. But Jesus, his silence, remember? His silence, what is he doing? He's doing his Father's will. And his Father is so much more powerful than the forces that are at work in the world. The world's forces are actually bringing about the purposes of God despite their best efforts. And God is bringing about a grand redemption through just the nefariousness of the characters in this story.

And there's an invitation for those nefarious characters to see not only his power but also his love. His silence and the dignity with which he treats everyone in the story despite the indignity of how they're treating him is an invitation for you to see his love.

As I've been wrestling this week with my friend's question, "If I don't have to believe this, then why would I?" Here's why. It's because Jesus, the Son of God, displayed his love by offering himself as a sacrifice for us. That, brothers and sisters, even though Pilate rejected it as not important, Herod rejected it as not entertaining, the crowd rejected it as not revolutionary. By the way, it was very revolutionary. More revolutionary than they could imagine. Jesus is the most valuable thing that we could ever have. Do you see?

My prayer this morning is that for those of you who aren't Christians, that you would see the value of Jesus. For those of you who are Christians, I pray that this walk around the donut would renew the sense of beauty of who he is. And that brings us to the Lord's Supper conveniently. The doughnut hole within the doughnut hole within the doughnut hole.