God Does His Best When We Do Our Worst

[0:00] well we know from uh extra sort of biblical documents that pilot didn't like the jews he was a roman prefect so he was put in charge of this territory judea this sort of county and the region gave him some trouble one of the dramas that he'd had to sort of confront was these insurgents right so these insurgents uh these ultra-nationalists like barabbas jewish jewish folks we get this idea in the head that they would rebel against rome and so there would be these uprisings every now and then and these kind of things reflected uh quite badly on pilot and sometimes when he had to deal with them uh his soldiers would act uh more brutally than necessary eventually this actually got him fired a few years after our reading today pilot was uh pilot was fired so this passover feast being a fairly tense time i think would have put him on edge jewish nationalism was running pretty high so he's probably thinking we i just need to get through this thing let's just get through the feast with no dramas but of course there was a drama drama was this the sanhedrin who was the jewish high council like the supreme court uh they turn up uh sort of in the morning uh with this prisoner jesus now the previous night a lot had happened judas was betrayed i mean jesus was betrayed by judas jesus was captured and he was led to the house of caiaphas the high priest they kind of hurriedly gathered this kind of high court proceeding together and they try to pin a charge on jesus that would get him killed this all happened at night time and these guys needed to get a charge to stick they needed two witnesses to say the same thing and they had a lot of trouble doing that so caiaphas wanting to get things going uh said to jesus you're not saying that you are the christ are you and jesus said yes and of course that was blasphemy and the high the high court said well you deserve to die now because because the jews are under roman rule they can't they can't just kill somebody not these guys the uh it was the romans that held i guess the power of the sword you'd say and so all they could do was hand jesus over hoping that they had a charge that would stick so they bound him up and delivered him to pilot now blasphemy is not going to be a particularly interesting charge for pilot he probably couldn't care less about blasphemy that's why they that's why they talk about this king of the jews thing right you see that in verse two and it's actually mentioned a number of times in the passage the king of the jews the king of the jews see that's what they're trying to stick to jesus ironically at some point the jewish council got together and we'll say listen we'll say the charge is this he claims to be a king therefore he's a threat to rome treason insurrection sedition all of that so that's the case they're trying to make against jesus that's verse one all right verse two we'll speed up a bit so verse two so jesus is before pilot and the prefect that's pilot just gets straight at it and he says are you the king of the jews and it's quite a mocking thing to say because jesus would have stood before him uh uh bloodied beaten this jewish peasant you the king of the jews then and jesus says you have said so interesting answer interesting answer

[4:03] he's not saying no but i think what he's saying here is yes but not not in the way you think now pilot clearly doesn't think that that jesus is a threat to him or rome look at verse 10 for he perceived that's pilot for he perceived that it was out of even envy that the chief priests had delivered him up see pilot knows this whole thing's a setup right it's a scam that the sanhedrin just want jesus dead now as i've said pilot is no friend of the jewish elders that he doesn't like them and he doesn't willingly want to be their puppet you also get the sense that uh pilot was overawed by christ as well i mean he doesn't want to hurt him we see that in verse 5 it's pilot was just uh pilot was amazed by him amazed by his presence his dignity so pilot comes up with a plan a cunning plan a plan so cunning it completely backfires so this is this is what he's this is what he's thinking right like this is what's happening in his mind he's going okay i'm the prefect he has this tradition passage says he's got this tradition he releases one prisoner each year at this time he's thinking this is perfect like the crowd loves jesus i'll ask the crowd who do you want to be released they'll say jesus this way pilot he gets to assert his authority over the sanhedrin by releasing jesus but he also gets to say it wasn't me it wasn't me it was the crowd the crowd said don't don't blame me we're still cool right so the crowd asks him for a prisoner and pilot assumes too much do you want me to release the king of the jews then verse 9 so i'm releasing jesus right i'm releasing jesus while the chief priest had gotten into the crowd and stirred them up to yell for barabbas who was the insurrectionist the murderer they yell for barabbas and this is a shock to pilot but pilot has to satisfy the crowd so he did what they wanted pilot knows it is wrong but he's a pragmatist he's a he's a business he's a businessman and here i think we find one of the uh the major themes in the passage and that is the theme of substitution the guilty barabbas is freed and the innocent jesus is killed barabbas barabbas was supposed to die but jesus dies instead barabbas if i was to pronounce his name properly would be bar with an r on the internet obviously bar abba bar abba son of the father isn't that interesting son of the father clearly linking this man to jesus right see this this this middle chunk here this is not like a case of jesus goes to the cross and an interesting side note you know you know lucky lucky break for barabbas no the passage is linking these men there is this uh jesus death is a substitute for barabbas because it was barabbas that was supposed to die jesus is a ransom and in a very real way barabbas is us we are barabbas we are the people that were supposed to die and christ steps in we should have grateful hearts a second major theme

[8:03] i think which is which is throughout mark and yet i think kind of uh before the cross kind of climaxes right here it's a theme of rejection it is hard not to miss the tone of this passage isn't it sort of the the timber of it you know the the rejection of christ is is profound it is brutal it is it is total the theme of rejection is throughout the passage let me highlight a few verses verse one it was the whole council that delivered jesus to pilot to be crucified in verse three it was he was accused of many things the crowd want a murderer over jesus they want barabbas that's the kind of messiah they want no no jesus no no no give us give us the give us the murderer when pilot asks the crowd in another tactical blunder well what should i do with this guy probably thinking that they're gonna go easy on him well just just you know well beat him about slap him about a little bit and then release him crucify him they yell crucify him they say that a few times later on pilot asks another question and it says in verse 14 they shout all the more crucify him perhaps some of the same people who are at the triumphal entry that shouted hosanna in that last paragraph 16 to 20 very difficult to read these soldiers had no reason to enter so fully into the ridicule and mockery of jesus but they did it reads like a like a cat playing with a mouse you know like kind of like this cold torture mockery violence the rejection is total it came from jews it came from gentiles but we're all included here it was verbal it was emotional it was physical and it was unjust which is what makes the brutality and rejection all the more awful because as we know jesus was innocent let me read to you isaiah 53 again it's a passage you know written hundreds of years before this isaiah 53 he was oppressed he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that was led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers are silent so he opened not his mouth by oppression and judgment he was taken away and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living stricken for the transgressions of his people and they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth jesus was innocent even pilot says this the first time the crowd yells crucify him pilot responds in verse 14 why what is what evil has he done what has this guy done there's no answer just another round of crucify him now why is this why is this idea of rejection so important in the passage well the answer is a hard one to hear because it deeply offends our sense of dignity

[12:02] I think Mark highlights rejection because humanity's inclination all of us humanity's inclination is that the created wants to kill the creator I mean this is what I'd like to say in this sermon let me tell you what I want to tell you right now here's what I want to say I want to say the crowd said crucify him but we say crown him it's just not the case all the time is it I mean that urge to join the crowd to be free from a king to do what we want lingers and we are being sanctified it is true but it is still there the affections of our heart have been changed by the

[13:04] Holy Spirit that's why you're a Christian that's why you desire to come to church pray read your Bible gather with other Christians that's why it grieves you when you hear this description of Christ mocked yet there's little bubbles of rebellion pop up don't they in our hearts I have two points of application for you the first one is this repent repent repent repent I repent every day or I should for the many ways I choose myself I choose Barabbas over Christ for the many ways I desire sovereignty I mean look at the look at the all the different ways Jesus was rejected in this passage right by Pilate because for him it was it seemed like a simple business decision he was a pragmatist spineless but a pragmatist he knew it was wrong but doing it this way had great advantage to him temporarily

[14:16] I mean how often do we do that I know it's wrong but I kind of win for a moment the chief priests they rejected Christ well probably lots of reasons but a big one was power they wanted to keep it and Christ was a threat to them the crowd everyone else was yelling crucify him let's just get in there let's just all join in this is what everyone thinks all the soldiers just completely dehumanized by their profession probably so this rejection it just bubbles up in our lives and it has many many faces folks repent tell God you're sorry he is eager to forgive you eager to forgive second point of application the last one is gratitude pray for gratitude in your hearts if we could answer

[15:25] Pilate's question in verse 14 what has this man done we could probably come up with a fairly good list of positive things I think big ones high points would be that Christ has defeated our enemies a man deformed by leprosy you remember that in the gospels a man deformed by leprosy Christ reconstitute him gives him a place in his community again a woman the bleeding woman who was beyond human help he heals her little girl raises her from the dead what else has this man done well he's done these amazing things but in this passage we read about how he has suffered for us he suffered at the hands of his family who thought he was mad it was quite early on in Mark the hands of his old neighborhood who rejected him he suffered at the hands of his friends who abandoned him the last few weeks he suffered at the hands of his enemies we read about that today and later next week we'll read about how we suffered at the hands of God on the cross but here's why we should be grateful for that suffering because it is not arbitrary suffering behind it all was the massive and mighty plan of God and in that final suffering of Christ the judgment that was on all of us all of our sins was put on him in summary we see in today's passage we see humanity doing its worst worst and we should repent because we're all implicated so we see humanity doing its worst but we see

[17:24] God doing his best doing his best for us father give us grateful hearts amen so to to him