If you will, turn in your Bibles
to Mark, Chapter 15. Mark, Chapter 15. We'll look at the first 15 verses. And straightway in the morning,
the chief priest held a consultation with the elders and scribes and
the whole council and bound Jesus and carried him away and delivered
him to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, art thou
king of the Jews? And he answering said unto him,
thou sayest, And the chief priest accused him of many things, but
he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again, saying,
answerest thou nothing? Behold, how many things they
witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing. So that Pilate marveled. Now at the feast, he released
unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired. And there was one
named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection
with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection. And the
multitude, crying aloud, began to desire him to do as he had
ever done unto them, which was to release a prisoner of their
choice. But Pilate answered them saying,
will you that I release unto you the king of the Jews? For
he knew that the chief priest had delivered him for envy. But the chief priest moved the
people that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said
again unto them, what will you then that I shall do unto him
whom you call king of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify
him. Then Pilate said unto them, why? What evil hath he done? And they
cried out the more exceedingly, crucify him. And so Pilate, willing
to content the people, released Barabbas unto them and delivered
Jesus when he had scourged him. to be crucified. Now, I titled the lesson this
morning, Christ or Barabbas? That's what's going on here,
Christ or Barabbas? The savior or the sinner? Whom do you prefer? Who are you going to release?
Who's going to get your favor, Christ or this vile sinner? Now something worth noting is
at the beginning of these things, a consultation was held where
more than 100 people came together to work out all the details of
this kangaroo corpse. The Sanhedrin, which consisted
most, say, of over 70 people, were there. All the elders, all
the scribes, all the chief priests, and the chief priest, they were
all there, all there at this meeting. And every detail to
the letter was discussed And every place where there might
have been a problem, a plan was put into action to take care
of it. This thing was planned out. This thing didn't just happen. It was planned. Everything about
it was planned. And the one weak link in the
whole scheme was the general population and this This thing that Pilate had done
every year to release a prisoner of their choice to them. And
they knew that would happen. And if they called for the release
of Christ, that whole plan would come crashing down around their
ears. So this gathering, I want you to note this, was of the
most influential people in Israel. These men were intimidating. These men stoned people to death
who didn't follow their advice. They stoned them to death. Paul
was among them. He held the coat while they stoned
Stephen to death. And this gathering here, this
is the most influential men, most intimidating of men in all
of Israel. the high priest, the high council,
all the scribes, all the elders of Israel. And these men, their
plan was to infiltrate the common people and by whatever means
necessary to cause them to select Barabbas and call for the crucifixion
of Christ. Now Matthew 27 and verse 20 in
Matthew's account of this, It says, but the chief priest and
the elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas
and destroy Jesus. This is what, they went out into
the crowd. This is what you need to do,
you know. And then in Mark 15, verse 11,
he said, but the chief priest moved the people that he should
rather release Barabbas unto them. So they had carefully planned
and executed these plans, and they were going to rid themselves
of Jesus of Nazareth once for all. And so it is in our day. It is the hand of Satan to work
through influential men, intimidating men, whole denominations, whole
organizations. And he works in them to influence
the people to reject the Savior and show compassion to the sinner. You can't have the way of God
and the way of man at the same time. You can have one or the
other. You can't follow him and follow
this world. It won't work. It's going different
directions. They have different goals. They
have different means. And you can't have free will
and free grace. They ain't the same. Satan rules this world by lies
and deceits and empty promises. But I also want you to see that
both Satan's ways and the ways of deceived men do not hinder
the hand of God. He wasn't hindered one bit in
this. When it was all said and done,
Acts 4, 27 through 28 says, they were all gathered together, verse
28, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined
before to be done. That's what they did. Everything
that they did. Peter told them this, he said,
him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God, you have taken and with wicked hands have crucified and
slang. If we had time this morning,
if you've taken notes, you can jot these down. I could read
for you in Deuteronomy 21, verses 22 through 23, and in Zechariah
12, verse 10, in John 19, 36, in Exodus 12, 46, Numbers 9,
12, and 1 Corinthians 5, 7. If we had time, I could turn
and read all those scriptures to you and show you how that
the enemies of God and the enemies of our souls simply carried out
the will of God and fulfilled everything that these old prophets
said had to happen to Him. The scripture required that our
Redeemer should be crucified in a public, shameful manner
and not simply stoned according to the law of Moses. Now, had
they strictly followed the law of Moses, they would have taken
him out and stoned him. That's what they would do to
a false prophet, and that's what they were accusing him of. His body must be pierced, yet
not a bone in him be broken. They broke the bones of two of
them on the cross, but when they come to him, they saw he was
dead already and they didn't break any bones. What a comfort to know that wicked
men, even though Satan has taken captive, are never out of God's
control. He said through the prophets
that they were gonna give him vinegar to drink. Everything
that they did to him, those old prophets foretold, to the letter. And these men read the prophets. They knew what the prophets said,
and they yet fulfilled to the letter everything that God said
they'd do to him, they did. And that's true then, and it's
true today. God's still fulfilling scripture
through the hands of his enemies. God has a people He chose in
Christ, and the whole of their salvation was accomplished by
Christ, and the preaching of Christ is a means by which faith
is given to His people, and their election made known to them.
Peter said, neither is there salvation in any other. There's
none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must
be saved. You'll be saved believing on
this name, suffer in hell forever. That's what the scriptures teach.
This name manifested our Savior as he manifested that name in
his life and death and resurrection is the revelation of the glory
of God. That's where we see the glory
of his love on that cross. His kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus. We see there the glory of His
justice, the glory of His righteousness. We discover the glory of God
in His death. And there's three things about
His death that we should always remember and thank God for. First of all, that His death
is substitutionary. He died in my place. Now religion
will state that, but they don't believe it. They don't teach
it. If he died in my place, then I don't have to die. That's substitution. If he's my righteousness, then
I have a righteousness complete before God. It's already accepted. He's seated at the right hand
of God. I'm justified in him. He raised
him for our justification. And the whole of Scripture, listen
to this, the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's
substitution. For the transgression of God's
people was his stricken. Peter says he bore our sins in
his own body on the tree. And then Paul states this, Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And everything
in the scriptures points to his death as substitutionary. The
death of Christ was a substitutionary sacrifice. And then secondly,
we need to be reminded of this, that this substitutionary sacrifice
is the overall theme of scripture. He teaches this from beginning
to end, he teaches this. The whole of the Old Testament
is a declaration of how God has set forth his son to be the propitiation
for our sins through faith in his blood. Listen to this. This is what
our Lord revealed after his resurrection. He said to his disciples, he
said, these are the words which I spake unto you while I was
yet with you. that all things must be fulfilled
which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets
and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding
to understand the scripture. You'll never understand the scriptures
until you understand what he told them right there. And he said unto them, thus it
is written, And thus it behoove Christ to suffer and to rise
from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission
of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning
at Jerusalem. This is the theme of scripture.
It was then, it is now. It hasn't changed a bit. The
only thing that changed is the promised redeemer has come, and
now he's He accomplished, he literally accomplished, physically
accomplished our salvation, and God raised him from the dead,
declaring his acceptance of what Christ did, and seated him at
his right hand. And then thirdly, the cross of
Christ, or Christ crucified, is the revelation of the glory
of God. And we're commanded to preach
it just that way. Now, I said all that to say this.
What's really taking place in the selection of Barabbas is
a picture of substitution. Now, try to get this picture
in your head. Here's these men. And I mean,
these priests, these scribes, these pharisees, they hated his
guts. They wanted to get rid of him.
He was a threat to their office. He was telling everybody that
all this priesthood and all these things were going by the wayside,
that he was the fulfillment of all these things. And they saw
their jobs going down the tubes. They saw all the respect and
honor and so on that they had from the people going down. They
despised him. They wanted to get rid of him.
And so they all got together and they talked. They talked.
They held councils. And here's what we need to do,
you know. And they get it all planned out just right. And the whole time they're doing
this, God has already ordained that these wicked men, doing
exactly what they wanted to do in their hatred, he calls them
to make one of the most beautiful pictures of substitution anywhere
in the scripture. He come down to Brabus, and those
guards told him, said, Brabus, you can go free. Go free. You going to shoot me in the
back? No. No, you're good to go. You're free. You're done.
We've got no more interest in you. Why? Another's been chosen
to die in your stead. That's good news to the sinner. Now, I'm telling you. If God
ever convicts you of sin, and you'll get on his side in it
if he convicts you. You won't have anything to play.
You'll be on his side. God ought to send me to hell.
I don't want to go there. I don't want to stand before
a holy God, but he's just if he calls me to do it. I see that. You get in that place. And then
you discover in the gospel, in the scripture, another's been
chosen to die in your stead, and you're free to go. That's
substitution. Barabbas, the guilty, condemned,
cursed sinner, was set free because the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy,
innocent Lamb of God, died in his place. This is the very essence
and heart of the gospel, chosen sinners set free because Christ
was chosen to die in their stead. This is the very heart of salvation. See, this is why people stand
up here from a natural standpoint. They're looking at election and
they're saying, that's not fair, that can't be just, that's not
right. But when they see all of mankind
sitting under the curse of God, And God would be just if he wiped
the whole outfit out? Now that's a different story,
ain't it? Now God comes along and he said, I've chosen to save
some. Oh, that's good news. That's
good news. Because he didn't have to. He did this, it says, according
to the good pleasure of his will. That's what it says in Ephesians
chapter He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. We are, Paul said, justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus,
our Lord. In Romans 5, 6, it said, for
when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died. for
the ungodly. In Romans 5.8, God commendeth
his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. And then in Romans 8.33, it said,
who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Justified who? His elect. Isn't that what he's saying there?
Who is he that condemneth? It's Christ that died. Died for
who? His leg. Yea, rather, that is risen again,
who's even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
for us. Substitution is the heart of
the gospel, and God will cause even these evil enemies to picture
what he's purposed to do and what he's doing on that day.
They didn't know they were doing that. They just saw this as a
way of being sure that he went to the cross. And these evil men with the worst
of intentions, they went out into the crowd and intimidated
the people to call for the release of Barabbas and the destruction
of Jesus. Now here's the question, is that
what I preach? I asked myself, is this what
I preach? Is this my message to lost sinners? Or am I just beating air with
a bunch of interesting facts? Paul said to the Corinthians,
he said, when I came to you, I came not with excellency of
speech or wisdom declaring unto you the testimony of God. For
I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and
him crucified. That's the heart of the gospel,
substitution. There's a story I heard years
ago about a man who was forced to flee from his home because
of a forest fire. And he was surrounded by a fire,
and this fire changed directions, and now it was coming right down
toward his house. And so he grabbed his young son
by the hand, and they couldn't get out by car, and so he ran
as fast as he could away from the fire. But pretty soon, they
were both exhausted, and that fire is just by now surrounding
them. There's fire on every side. And
desperate and exhausted, he found a clearing, and he went right
out in the middle of it, and he held his son tight up against
him. fire being all around him, burn up, and they just kind of
hunkered down, and he shielded that little boy with his own
body. And just about the time they
should have been consumed by the flames, that fire died down. He come to that clearing, and
it died down. And later, being spared from
the fire, a reporter asked him, he said, How on earth did you
escape those flames? He said, I found a place that
was already burned. And I got out in the middle of
it, and I knew that the fire, once it had burned a place, he
can't burn it again. He can't burn it twice. That's substitution. If Christ
died for my sins, and the scripture said he died for our sins, if
he died for my sins, then God can't punish me or he won't be
just. He can't punish me and Christ,
one or the other, but not both, not both. That fire can't burn
twice where it's already burned. He can't do it. All right, may
the Lord teach us that lesson today. Thank you.