Give Us Barabbas

But the whole crowd shouted, "Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!"  

Luke 23:18

How quickly things change. Weren’t these the same people who had been shouting “Hosanna!” a few verses back? Some of them still had hoofprints on their cloaks from laying them in the street for the donkey to walk on. But they had exchanged palm branches for clubs and adoration for scorn. What kind of Messiah lets Himself be arrested and charged with insurrection? Was it true what the religious leaders were saying? Had this Rabbi committed blasphemy? Was He causing riots? What a fraud! They’d called Him a King, but now condemned Him as a criminal. They’d rather have that murdering Barabbas released than this Man who had dashed their hopes. What kind of people change allegiance so quickly? People like us.

“Give us Barabbas!” the Jews cried. “Give us health, wealth, and happiness!” we cry. Maybe there was a time when you welcomed Jesus as your King. Your eyes were opened to Who He was and what He had done for you. But you also welcomed a lot of extras with Him, expectations He did not meet. Maybe you assumed the Christian life would be a smooth ride through Easy Street, but instead, everything got worse. “Forget it,” you thought. “I’ll make myself happy the way I want to.” We’d rather have our rights and our comforts than a God who has dashed our hopes. So we slam the Bible, disconnect from God, and join the Jews in choosing Barabbas. Before we judge their betrayal too harshly, maybe we should first look in the mirror.

Following Jesus

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  Mark 8:34

“Who wants go to heaven some day?” asked Miss Wilson of her preschoolers. Every hand went up and she beamed with joy at her class of 30 “converts.” Bill got the same results at the county jail when he asked if any of the incarcerated men were “Christians.” Nine out of ten nodded. Likewise, teenagers smoking pot behind the gym laughed through a smoky haze about the times they “got saved” at youth camp, VBS, or when a friend forced them down the aisle at church. We’ve come to accept such claims as valid, but do those situations sound anything like Jesus’ definition of following Him?

Nowhere in scripture do we find commands to “ask Jesus into your heart,” “pray this prayer after me,” or “accept Christ.” Those phrases are attempts to explain the spiritual transaction that must take place in order to begin a relationship with God. Jesus called it being “born again” (John 3:3). But we have substituted the idea that “Christian” means checking the right boxes on a heavenly survey. However, Jesus was startlingly clear about what it means to know Him. He doesn’t take the back seat. He doesn’t offer to be “part” of our lives. Unless He is first in our lives, we are not His followers. If we won’t choose Him over everyone and everything, we are not worthy of Him (Matt. 10:37-38). Taking up our cross means we are willing to die to everything that displeases Him. When we do, we find more than an escape from Hell. We find that He is all we were looking for.

Cursed By God

For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”   Galatians 3:13

“Crucify Him!” The screams from the bloodthirsty crowd echoed through the universe and Satan’s host cheered. Evil had won. Perfection would be silenced forever and humanity was all his. What neither Satan nor Jesus’ friends realized was that this moment had already been decreed as part of God’s plan to buy back humanity from sin’s enslavement. To be stripped bare and nailed to a tree in disgrace was the worst way to die. God’s law stated that any criminal who was hung on a tree was under God’s curse. To be crucified meant that even God had turned His back on you. What made this moment more incredible is that when Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 prophesied the kind of death Messiah must undergo, crucifixion had not been invented yet.

For Jesus to take our full punishment upon Himself, He had to experience the curse of God. In those hours as the Son of God writhed in agony between heaven and earth, He became our sin. His pure mind had never entertained a dirty, jealous, or hateful thought, yet it was flooded with every vile, perverted image human beings have entertained. The perfect hands that had healed lepers and blessed children became the hands of a pedophile, a murderer, and a thief. As He hung there, the embodiment of evil, God’s righteous wrath was poured out upon His own Son: “How could you murder babies! How could you lie steal, cheat, and lust! I cannot look at you!” When Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” the curse that Adam’s sin brought upon the world was broken. Our debt was paid. Adam brought sin’s curse through one tree; Jesus broke it through another tree.

What's the Big Deal?

He was the delight of his Father. Their joy was complete when they were together. They needed nothing else. Unity of spirit, unity of desire, unity in every way. It was their very existence. They laughed together, planned together, rejoiced together in delight at their creation. They had always done everything as One and would continue to do so.

Except Friday was coming.

We often overlook what that Friday really meant to God. We read of Jesus' agonized cry in the Garden of Gethsemane and cringe at the physical torture he faced. Sure, he was grieved. Who wouldn't be? And in our human attempt to understand, we miss the real point.

We can only fathom the physical realities of the beatings and crucifixion. They were gruesome enough, but not the real pain. To comprehend the real tragedy of those 9 hours we have to get inside the mind of God and gaze for a moment upon total unity. 

We don't understand unity. Marriage is the best picture God could paint for us and we have made a mockery of that.

But the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit know. It's all they'd known. Jesus knew what was coming and experienced a dread so great it almost killed him beforehand. To be separated, despised, scorned by his Father. It was unthinkable.

But in those hours, Jesus became SIN. The sin he had never touched now defiled him in every way. As he was hoisted into the hair to hang as a public disgrace, the heaviness of every sin human beings had ever embraced pressed upon him.

And he had to endure his Father's disgust. "How could you! You lied! You stole! You adulterer! I'm horrified by you. You deserve this just punishment.'

The thunder of Righteousness Offended echoed through the soul of the Son with a vibration that would have shaken him off the cross had the spikes been weaker.

"You disgust me! How could you rape little babies? You've cannibalized human flesh! You've molested old women, tortured pets, and ignored your children! You are covered with the stench of immorality, arrogance, and lust! I cannot stand this! I will not look at you any longer!"

He took not only our evil acts, he also took our grief. Our regret. Our sorrow. The One who had never known remorse now felt the full force of our guilt in his heart. The shame of the 16-year old after losing her virginity. The regret of the 22-year-old mom after the abortion. The grief of the drunk driver who has just killed a family of 3. The embarassment over the drunken party. The remorse at hiding those porn videos. As his body bore the weight of our sin, his soul bore the weight of our guilt.

And the source of Living Water cried out, "I thirst!" It was not wine he wanted, nor water. His soul, as David's once did,  thirsted for the Living God. A thirst he had never experienced before.

"Your evil requires that I withdraw my presence. You are the very embodiment of all I hate. I cannot tolerate you in this condition. I am leaving you. This is what it feels like to be without Me. This is the punishment your sin deserves."

The sky grew dark as the Light withdrew.  But it was a darkness the Son had never known and he cried out, as a child cries out in terror: "Father! Abba! Don't leave me! Why? Why are you forsaking me?"

In those hours on the cross, Jesus gave us a clear picture of what Hell is like. Hell is feeling the full weight of our sin and guilt with no comforting presence of the Father. No relief. No hope. No end.
 
God displayed Hell for all the world to see so that no one has an excuse.

Until we comprehend what our sin cost God, we will continue to abuse his grace. We wrinkle our noses at our self-will and pride and we shrug. "What's the big deal? God will forgive me."
  
Take another long look at what happened during 9 hours one Friday. Can you see your sin on him? Is that your little white lie tucked in his matted hair? Is that your lust pressing down on his shoulder? Your dishonesty clutched in his palm? 

Take a good look at what sin costs God.
Where do you plan to tuck your next one?

 

With Veteran's Day just passed, our minds are on those who have fought and are still fighting the battle for freedom. Untold thousands have faced danger, heat, cold, pain, and loneliness to ensure that those they love can continue to experience the luxury of freedom. Many lost their own lives in the process. Our nation owes each one a debt of gratitude, and they are received home with a hero's welcome. The 18-year-old private is welcomed with just as much honor and respect as the four-star general. They fought the same battle and made it home.

Have you ever considered that you will receive such a welcome when you arrive at your heavenly home? If you've given your life to Jesus, taken his battle upon you, and fought the good fight of faith, your transition from this life to the next will be a hero's homecoming. The Bible often compares our struggles here with a battle. Ephesians 6 even goes into detail about the kind of armor we must wear to be victorious.

We battle daily--hourly--with enemies we cannot see whose goal is to destroy us and the freedom Jesus bought for us. No battle is easy. Those veterans walking in the parade paid a high price for that privilege. And conquering evil, temptation, and our own sinful flesh is not easy either. We must be willing to pay whatever price is necessary to win the final victory. Jesus called it "taking up our cross daily." 

Dragging a heavy cross to the site of the crucifixion was definitely not easy. He was brutalized, mocked, and murdered; yet, he overcame it all. He won His battle and urges us onward as we fight ours.

Turn your eyes heavenward today. If you are serious about earning a hero's welcome, stay focused on the reason for your battle. You are fighting to hold on to the freedom Jesus gave you. Don' t let anyone steal it. Not sin. Not Satan. Not friends. Not your own weakness.  You are fighting for your King.

Battle on, Soldier. The hero's welcome will be worth it.
  

At Cross Purposes

We see crosses everywhere. Gold ones dangling between buxom breasts, wooden ones stuck to the tops of churches, and painted ones adorning business presumably owned by Christians.

Fancy, pretty, ornate crosses are clutched by the masses as though simply the shape possesses magical powers . In modern society, the cross has come to symbolize something mystical, almost like having a personal genie. Once again, Satan has twisted truth until it satisfies our basest selfishness because he rightly knows that when he makes it all about US, we buy it every time.

When Jesus told his followers that if any of them truly wanted to be his disciple, they must "take up your cross daily and follow me" he wasn't offering to be their genie.

We often assume what he meant was bearing our own burdens without complaining. Or giving up something worldly for his sake. But that's only a tip of the iceberg.

The cross always stands for death. Cruel, purposeful, agonizing death of something found to be abhorrent. The cross did not save us. It had no power in itself. It was a means to an end that Jesus chose while every fiber of his humanity cried out to do otherwise.

When he tells us that in order to follow him we must also take up our cross, he means that like him, we must die. Our self-life must be crucified along with him, or we will never be all that he calls us to be. We might look good on the outside, but until we've taken up our cross, we're just putting on a show.

We don't hear this preached much anymore--dying to SELF. It doesn't play very well in hedonistic American culture. The sermons we want are the ones about God meeting all our needs...or taking us to Heaven...or defeating all our enemies. We like those!

But Jesus preached a different sermon and his is the only way to truly experience any of the above. To take up your cross is to do as the Apostle Paul said and consider ourselves "crucified with Christ." Jesus didn't come to tame our flesh. He came to kill it. And until we allow him to kill it, we have no more power inside us than we did before. His Holy Spirit gets a chair in the corner of our hearts while our flesh rages on as before. That won't work.

If you want God to do amazing things in your life, through you and in you, then you must die. No fence-straddling. No holding on to "just a teensy gray area." No passionate interest in anything but Him.

And we cannot do it. We absolutely cannot make ourselves die to SELF.

That's why we need the cross. Remember, it symbolizes purposeful, painful killing of something we consider abhorrent. Until we recognize that all that ME we once found so appealing is really our enemy, we won't be willing to let it die. We cling to SELF like the last parachute in the biplane.

"That's what makes me ME!" we whine.
"You have to look out for Number One, or nobody else will."
"I have a right to be proud of myself for all I've accomplished."

"Take up your cross daily and follow me," Jesus said. He emphasized the word daily because he was well aware of our tendency to go back on our commitments. Dying to SELF is a daily reckoning. As an accountant tallies up the books each day, we must allow God to examine our hearts and see what might be amiss.

Have we gone back to bragging on ourselves?
Have our once-pure motives turned selfish?
Is our desire for acclaim getting out of hand?

Next time you see a cross, let it be a personal message from Jesus to you. Are you dead yet?
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