Full Transcript

Hi, and welcome to Share the Word, the best way to learn your way through the New Testament one chapter at a time. We know there are a lot of devotionals and encouraging thoughts for the day from the Bible available online, but our goal is a little more to honestly and systematically present the whole story of the New Testament. So let’s listen in to today’s lesson and go a little deeper. Luke chapter 23, Barabbas and Me. Where we last left the story, Luke was describing how Jesus, after a night of interrogations and abuse, had been brought before the full Sanhedrin, Israel’s highest religious court, early the morning after his arrest. Led by the high priests, these were Jesus’ most determined enemies who were bent on seeing him done away with.

In their minds, he was a great threat. That was the real issue. But at that morning hearing, after badgering him for a while, they found him guilty of blasphemy, and that to them was enough of a reason to see him killed. But there was an obstacle. The Sanhedrin had limited powers granted to them by the Romans, who were the real controllers in Israel, and they did not extend to executing people. That’s why Jesus ended up being taken to the Roman official Pontius Pilate very early Friday morning, the Roman governor who was in Jerusalem to ensure the peace was maintained during this Passover week.

When Pilate came out to see them to find out what the representative of the council wanted at such an hour, he was told, We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding people to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that he himself is a king. Well, some of that was true, I suppose. Some of it was false, but all of it was very shaped to appeal to Pilate’s real concerns. He didn’t care about religious matters and confrontations Jesus was having with the religious leaders. He didn’t care about that stuff. He cared about only two things: keeping the peace in Israel and keeping the tax revenue flowing to Rome.

Those were his biggest two responsibilities. When Pilate asked Jesus if he in fact claimed to be a king, Luke gives us only a summary of his response to the effect, You have got that right. If you recall, in the Gospel of John, we’re given a fuller account of his exchange where, under questioning, Jesus told Pilate, in fact, he is a king, but not of this realm, meaning not a political earthly kingdom was he claiming. Pilate wouldn’t have understood that, but he perceived correctly that the Jewish leaders’ beef with this person was over religious interpretations, not something that went to his real concerns. So he told them, I don’t find any reason to bring charges here. But Jesus’ accusers insisted that he was a troublemaker, stirring up people all over Israel from Galilee to Judea.

When Pilate learned that Jesus was from Galilee, which was a separate administrative district, he thought he saw a way to pass the buck. He ordered Jesus to be taken to Herod Antipas, who was the tetrarch of Galilee. Herod was also in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, so this was convenient, and it seemed like to Pilate a good way to pass the buck. But it didn’t work. Jesus’ accusers brought the same kinds of charges against him to Herod, but all Herod wanted to see is if Jesus would perform a miracle for him. Jesus had no respect whatsoever for that puppet Jewish ruler.

He actually was the one who had ordered the death of John the Baptist. When Jesus would not answer his questions at all or respond to him in any way, Herod joined in mocking him, Luke says. He and his soldiers treated Jesus contemptuously, wrapped him in a royal-looking robe, and sent him back to the Roman governor. Not what Pilate wanted to see happen. He once again tried to avoid what his gut told him was a grave injustice. He told the high priest and the mob they had now gathered to pressure him, I don’t find any reason to condemn this man, and neither obviously does Herod, for he returned him here.

But here’s what I will do. I will punish him, but then I’m releasing him. The punishment, we learn in the other Gospels, was a brutal flogging which Jesus was subjected to. But that didn’t satisfy Jesus’ enemies. Pilate then only had one more card to play. There was a custom that on this high Jewish holiday, the governor could commute the sentence of someone in custody, could release a condemned prisoner as a goodwill gesture.

He had Jesus brought out to stand before them. He had been severely beaten. He was wrapped in a blood-soaked royal-looking robe. He was wearing a crown of thorns that had been pressed down into his skull. His face was so swollen from the beatings that he had had throughout the night, he was unrecognizable. To the crowd now gathered on the square in front of the praetorium, Pilate offered to release Jesus now as an act of mercy.

But the high priest incited the crowd to instead call for the release of a criminal also in custody. Barabbas! Barabbas! they called out. But what about Jesus? Pilate shouted back at them.

Crucify him! Crucify! As their cries became louder and more insistent, a frustrated Pilate finally felt it was expedient to give in, and reluctantly, he did. How tragically ironic is it that he consented to release Barabbas, someone Luke tells us who was in fact a murderer and insurrectionist, someone Rome rightly should have executed. But instead that morning, Pilate ended up ordering Barabbas’ release and signing Jesus’ death warrant. Can you imagine Barabbas in his cell, likely in the basement of that praetorium?

From above him, outside where this was playing out, he could hear the shouts of his name. He must have been thinking, It’s barely daylight and there’s a crowd outside calling for my execution? Can you imagine then, when he was feeling, when shortly he heard the guards coming down the stone stairs toward his cell, then unlocking the big iron latch, fully expecting to be hauled out of there and dragged to crucifixion. But he was instead unshackled and told he was free to go. What? Is this some kind of crazy sadistic joke he must have thought?

But it was real, and Barabbas was released. I’ve often thought, as I’ve tried to imagine this whole scene, how, in a way, Barabbas escaping judgment and being set free is poignantly symbolic. It’s representational. The Bible teaches that all of us who have sinned against God rightly deserve judgment. But that we can escape judgment because Jesus took our place. In Barabbas’ case, that literally happened.

Jesus literally took his place that morning. So he, in a way, represents us, all of us who have our faith in Christ and have been forgiven by God and set free from the deserved consequences of our sins. Barabbas was set free only because Jesus was condemned and died in his place. The very same thing can be said of me. I have been set free because Jesus was condemned and died in my place. That’s an amazing thought to me.

After Pilate relented and signed the death warrant, Jesus was led out of Jerusalem along with two criminals through Jerusalem’s narrow streets, crowded now with people who had learned what was going on. Some undoubtedly were horrified followers of his. Others were just curious spectators. And still others were the priests and the mob they had assembled to demand his execution. Some of those bitter enemies followed on to the place the locals called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull, the execution site, just so they could mock him as he was suffering. The Romans called this place Calvary.

That was a very visible location just outside the walls of Jerusalem. The whole point of crucifixion for the Romans was that it be very public, very visible, to serve as a maximum deterrent to anyone thinking about challenging Roman authority. There’s a rocky hill on the north side of Jerusalem to this day that, from a certain angle, represents a skull. Google a picture of it. This is exactly the place where Jesus died. Once they reached that execution site, we learn from the Gospel of Mark it was about 9 a.m.

Jesus and two other condemned criminals would have been stripped naked, then stretched out on rough-hewn wooden cross members and pinned to them by large six- to seven-inch iron nails hammered down through their wrists and between their ankle bones. Then the crosses would be hoisted up and dropped into holes that are already dug in the ground, dropped with a heavy thud, and to the shrieks of pain. The scene Luke describes in verses 33 and following has many phrases directly taken from the Psalms, which, although written a thousand years before, graphically describe the suffering of the Messiah. Listen to these prophetic words from Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you don’t answer me, and by night, but I find no rest. All who see me mock me. They make faces at me. They wag their heads and mock me. He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him if he delights in him. Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.

I was cast from my birth, and my mother’s womb, and you have been my God since then. Do not be far from me, for trouble is upon me, and there is no one here to help. Bulls encompass me; strong bulls surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like ravening, roaring lions. I am being poured out like water. My bones are all out of joint.

My heart is like wax melting in my chest. My strength is drying up like a potsherd. My tongue is sticking to my jaws. A company of evildoers encircle me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones.

They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. For my clothing they cast lots. So many details from that psalm exactly played out atop Calvary that day. Amazingly, amidst this violence against him and over the sneering mockery of those who came out just to watch him die, some heard Jesus pray for his torturers, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. What does it tell you about God’s love and compassion that in the middle of this brutal scene, Jesus was not thinking about himself but praying for others, even those who participated in his execution?

Even more to that point, Luke records how the two criminals executed on crosses near Jesus reacted very differently to what was happening. One derisively was shouting at him, Aren’t you supposed to be the Christ? Save us and save yourself. But in contrast, the other admitted he was getting justice for his crimes, while Jesus had done nothing wrong. That man sincerely called to Jesus from his cross, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. We don’t know anything about him except that he is described as a criminal.

He’s guilty of serious enough crimes that called for the death penalty. But apparently, aware of who many said Jesus was, in these final hours of life, he confessed his own sinfulness and guilt and believed enough in Jesus to call on him to save him. And you know what? Amazingly, that was enough. We know that because Jesus heard his words and responded, I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. That is heaven.

That’s worth taking in for a moment. Let that sink in. Many people have trouble accepting the biblical idea of grace, that is, that forgiveness and salvation have nothing to do with goodness or worthiness in us, but are a gift of God available to anyone who confesses their own sinfulness and need and calls out in faith to the Savior God sent. Hasn’t Luke already recorded for us in better days, Jesus had taught that he had come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and had come to seek and to save those who are lost, like this guy. This amazing exchange Luke allows us to listen into from a sinner on a cross to the Savior on a cross near him is impossible to misinterpret. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

All. No matter where you are in life or where you have been in life, if you know you need the Savior and know that God sent one named Jesus, call on the name of the Lord. Jesus’ gracious promise to that dying criminal is the promise for all of us. If we call on him in faith, the day we breathe our last here, that very day we will be with him in paradise. From noon until 3 p.m., Luke writes, while Jesus was suffering on the cross, the world was enshrouded in darkness. We get the English word excruciating directly from the torture of crucifixion.

Jesus’ physical suffering was extreme. Remember, he had been brutally flogged before he was even led to the execution site. Then he was pinned to the cross with those large spikes through the bones in his wrists and his ankles, and he was hung up to die. To breathe at all in that situation required painfully pulling yourself up by your punctured wrists and pushing yourself up from the nailed ankles to let your lungs fill with air. But as time went on and you lost the strength to do that, your lungs would begin to fill with fluid. It’s really difficult to imagine for us the physical agony Jesus experienced during those hours.

Yet I don’t believe that is anywhere near the worst part of what he suffered that day. The darkness that shrouded the earth was representational of God’s judgment, which was falling on him as he suffered on the cross. Remember, Jesus had told those who would listen that this was coming for him. He said it would be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about the suffering servant of the Lord, who would be wounded for our transgressions and punished for our iniquities. The Lord would cause the wrongdoing of all of us to fall on him because it was the Lord’s plan to crush him, to make his life an offering for sin. The physical part of Jesus’ suffering is difficult to imagine, yes, but the psychic and spiritual dimension of Jesus’ suffering is impossible for us to imagine.

I mean, what possibly could have been like for Jesus to feel the crushing weight of the world’s sins on him, and then to be punished by God for them? That is the part that’s beyond my imagination. But that is the part that infinitely matters because it’s only due to that substitutionary atonement made for our salvation that played out in the darkness that Friday afternoon, that terrible yet necessary plan that God had conceived of and that Jesus submitted to, that any of us sinners can be forgiven and reconciled to our Creator. As my favorite hymn puts it, On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin was laid on Him; here in the death of Christ I live. When Jesus had finished the atonement for our sins, He called out, Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit, and then He slumped in death.

Luke makes a point to mention that many witnesses to Jesus’ death were there. This didn’t happen in some remote location. Jesus was crucified publicly just outside of Jerusalem’s northern wall during its busiest time of the year. His crucifixion, along with that of the two criminals, was meant to be seen. There was a contingent from the temple there, priests and officers. There were curious spectators there.

There were several women who were followers of Jesus there. There were several Roman soldiers who carried out the execution and provided security at the site. Why is that important? It’s important because it proves Jesus really died. It was far too public, too witnessed for anyone to credibly deny that, and that’s an important fact. I also want to point out a very significant phenomenon that occurred in the temple itself just when Jesus died.

Luke says that in that inner sanctum of the temple we call the Holy of Holies, inside Jerusalem’s temple, the veil, as he called it, which was a thick curtain separating the holy place from the Holy of Holies, was somehow torn in two. How? And what did that have to do with anything? Well, the Holy of Holies was cordoned off by this thick hanging curtain, picture a heavy hanging tapestry that surrounded and blocked it off from view. The Holy of Holies was made to be the place of God’s own presence. No one ever went inside that veil except the high priest of Israel, and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement to make an offering for the nation’s sin.

He went in there and he sprinkled the blood of a perfect sacrificial animal on the mercy seat, which was the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. But on this afternoon, just when Jesus died, Luke says that veil, which was the barrier between God’s presence and the people, that heavy curtain was somehow torn in two. That was clearly a supernatural event. The Gospel of Matthew adds, so we don’t imagine it otherwise, that it was torn in two from the top to the bottom. The dramatic message, I believe God was sending is this: no longer do people need rituals and priests and sacrifices to approach me. Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice has made a way possible for all who believe to come right into my presence.

We’ll see later as we travel through the New Testament how the book of Hebrews explains much more about this significant event. After the death of Jesus, Luke tells us the scene and mood definitely changed. After what they had witnessed there, after the weird three hours of darkness in the middle of the day, after Jesus’ words spoken from the cross and the unusual way he died, even the pagan centurion in charge said, This was an innocent man. Nothing about the way Jesus died was anything like any criminal’s death that he had seen before. Many who had followed the crucifixion process that morning out of Jerusalem just to watch it, Luke says they now returned after what they saw that day, beating their breasts, an act of contrition and great sorrow in that culture. They knew a travesty of justice had occurred, and they sensed that God was deeply offended at them.

One member of the Sanhedrin, who had not consented to what the high priest had done in pressuring Pilate to condemn Jesus, went to the governor and requested his body so he could give it a proper burial. His name was Joseph of Arimathea. He was a prominent and well-to-do man and one who sincerely worshipped God. He owned a new tomb not far from the execution site that was cut into one of the rocky hillsides near Jerusalem. We can assume it was for his own family’s use, but no one had yet been buried there. Pilate gave Joseph permission, and he and another man we’ve already met named Nicodemus removed Jesus from the cross, wrapped his corpse in a linen sheet, and took it to the tomb site.

Luke time notes for us that this was the day of preparation, which means Friday. So by now, late Friday afternoon, the high Sabbath of Passover began at 6 p.m. that day, so they must work quickly because no religious Jew would touch a dead body on the Sabbath day. At the close of chapter 23, Luke comments that some dejected women who were disciples of Jesus saw all this and made note of where he had been entombed. This seemed to them, and all of his followers at this point, like an incredibly sad, wasted, ridiculously unjust ending to Jesus’ life. But hold on, hold on. This is only Friday.

Sunday is coming. Thanks, Paul, and thanks for listening. We hope you found this commentary both interesting and insightful. Visit ShareTheWord.org and check out all the podcasts we’ve already released, as well as other offerings available to you. Everything that’s produced at Share the Word is free for you to use and to share. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.