Which Jesus Will You Choose?, Matthew 27:15-26

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me an email that says why Jesus is better than Santa Claus; I thought I would read it. Somebody had done a pretty good job. I modified and fixed a few things.

Santa lives at the North Pole; Jesus lives everywhere.

Santa rides his sleigh; Jesus rides on the wind and walks on the water.

Santa comes but once a year; Jesus is an ever-present help.

Santa fills your stockings with goodies; Jesus applies all your needs.

You have to wait in line to see Santa; Jesus is as close as the mention of His name.

Santa lets you sit in his lap; Jesus lets you rest in His arms.

Santa doesn't know your name. All he can say is, Hi little boy or girl, what's your name? Jesus knew our name before we did.

He knows our address history and future too. He even knows how many hairs are on our head.

Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly; Jesus has a heart full of love.

All Santa can offer is ho, ho, ho; Jesus says come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Santa's little helpers make toys; Jesus makes a new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs, broken homes, and builds mansions.

Satan may make you chuckle; Jesus gives you joy beyond all comprehension.

While Santa puts gifts under your tree; Jesus is our gift, and He died on the tree.

We've been looking at the events leading up to that crucifixion and we come to a point where we begin the sixth of the six trials, the third in the second set of trials, the religious trials. We see here Pilate continuously trying to avoid what becomes increasingly obvious, and that is condemning Jesus to death, and that He's not worthy of it. He finds no fault in Jesus, but he is caught in a religious and a political vice, and getting squeezed. There's no place for him to escape, so he keeps trying to come up with options, ways to avoid it, and he comes up with this option of offering them a criminal. It is something that has been going on for a number of years. Nobody knows when or why or how it originated but apparently each year at the Passover feast the procurator would offer a criminal to be released and given his freedom, something to placate the Jews who were hostile to their Roman conquerors. This appeals to Pilate and appears to Pilate that this is what he should do instead, and to avoid sending Jesus to be crucified. He has got the idea that Jesus really hasn't done much, why in the world would they choose to release a horrible criminal when Jesus has not really done anything? He's no threat to anyone. He thinks he has a way out and he's going to give them a choice. That's the same choice that everybody else has: which Jesus will you choose?

We are in the civil trials. There six trials. There is debate among scholars whether these are six actual autonomous trials or whether there are two trials with three elements to each one. I still like the idea that there six trials. There are three religious trials before the religious leaders of Israel and then there are three criminal trials.

We have looked at those opening religious trials. The first was before the former high priest Annas who is at the head of a criminal enterprise, and he is using his position as the high priest to control the buying and selling of animals on the Temple Mount for sacrifices, the exchange of money, so that if you came from outside of Israel and didn't have the right currency, you could exchange. Of course he took a healthy cut, and those were the moneychangers. His enterprise is been attacked by Jesus, both at the beginning and now at the end of His ministry when He has gone into the temple and cleansed it and thrown out the moneychangers. That is a direct assault on the organized crime that is run from Annas, the former high priest.

He's the first one that Jesus appeared to in John 18:12-14, and then he went to the acting high priest, the son-in-law of Annas named Caiaphas, and there they come up with a trumped up charge, a manufactured charge. They bring in all manner of false witnesses; they can't get any two to agree. Finally two kind of get close and so Caiaphas takes advantage of that, stands up and rips his garment, accuses Jesus of blasphemy, which is not true, to blaspheme God. You had to use the name of God, which Jesus has not done, and so they manufacture this charge of blasphemy. They demand that He be put to death because of that, but since as Roman subjects they are not allowed to execute anyone, not allowed to implement the death penalty, they have to then go to the prefect, which is Pontius Pilate.

Pilate by this time has been the prefect for six years. He has offended the Jews on several occasions, has been guilty of blasphemy, has been insensitive to their religious requirements, and at one point he marched his troops into Jerusalem bearing an image of the Emperor on their imperial standards. This of course violated the Mosaic Law—having graven images. So a huge group of religious leaders went to Caesarea by the sea to protest. He could not negotiate with them so he sent his troops among them saying that if they would not disburse he would cut off their heads. They reacted by pulling back their robes bearing their necks, and bending over, basically saying, go ahead and do it. Pilate had to back down. He knows politically that since Sejanus, who was of the acting Emperor in Rome, had visions of taking over the Empire himself he had been arrested in a removed from office. So Pilate no longer has a protector and knows that if he does anything that creates more civil unrest he may lose his job. He is caught in this in this particular vice between the political realities of Rome and the religious realities of the Sanhedrin.

Jesus appears to him in the first trial and comes to the conclusion that he can find no fault in Jesus. That is his first statement at the end of John 18, around verses 45 or 46.

Jesus has been taken to pilot's headquarters, the Praetorium. For many years, if you come out of a Roman Catholic background, you heard about the Via Dolorosa, the way tears, and you would come in this way and believe that because this is where the Antonio Fortress was located that this is where the Praetorium was located. That is wrong. The Via Dolorosa has nothing to do with what happened on Jesus walk.

Pilate sends Jesus to Herod Antipas, which is probably just in a building next door, and Herod examines Him. That is described in Luke chapter 23. He can't find any real fault with Him either, but his soldiers are going to mock Jesus and they put a robe on Him. The description of the robe doesn't give us a lot of detail. It is probably the best way to understand it as an idiom, and they probably took some robe that has some value and they're mocking Jesus. He claims to be the king of the Jews and so this robe is to indicate that He has this claim to royalty. But they're doing all of this just to mock Him, and to ridicule Him. Then because Herod can find any fault with Him, Herod sends Him back to Pilate.

In Luke 23:13, "Pilate summoned the chief priests and the rulers and the people". So now there's quite a crowd that is showing up. There are the chief priests and the rulers. These are the religious elite: the chief priests, the elders, the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin. These are gathered together. Luke includes the people, so there is a huge crowd there. But this isn't the crowd that was singing Hosanna to Jesus as He entered into Jerusalem. There are a lot of people who confuse that. It's not a fickle crowd that's following Jesus. This is a crowd that has been manufactured by the organized criminal elements of Annas the former high priest, and the Sanhedrin. They probably paid for them, just like today.

We have various political demonstrations against the current administration that pop up every time they breathe. Somebody reacts and they have a demonstration. You wonder where in the world they got all the signs that were made up. They've already been made up. These planned demonstrations have been planned for several weeks. They are paid for by money, mostly from George Soros who's a billionaire radical leftist who seeks to destroy Western civilization, and he funds many radical organizations. So they pay for these people to come out and to demonstrate against some government policy, just to create more disruption and more chaos. And so that's probably what was going on with this crowd. This crowd is going to be totally manipulated by the chief priests and the leaders. hey probably promise them something, they paid them something, and so it is a crowd there to do what the religious leaders want them to do.

In verse 14 Pilate speaks and he says, “You brought this man to me as one who incites the people to rebellion, and behold, having examined Him before you, I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against Him." He repeats the fact of his conclusion at the end of his first examination; that there is no fault of Jesus and of anything that they accuse him of. And then he goes on to say, “No, nor has Herod, for he sent Him back to us; and behold, nothing deserving death has been done by Him." Again he is reiterating as he does many times through this.

Pilate asserts His innocence and that He's not worthy of death. He's done nothing deserving of death, and so he thinks he will placate the crowd and he says, "I'll chastise him", which is the Greek word PAIDUO, which simply means to discipline someone. It is the same word that you use for disciplining a child, and so he's going to discipline him in some way. It could include physical beatings or torture, but not necessarily, and he says he will release Him, and that's the idea of letting him letting Him go, freeing Him. He finds no reason to keep Him whatsoever.

We will see again and again that Pilate seeks to release Jesus. In Matthew 27:22 he says he asked them again, "What shall I do with him?" He doesn't want to execute Him. Then finally, as they say they want to have been crucified, he will wash his hands, claiming that he is innocent of the blood. So again he says he is innocent of shedding the blood of Christ. This is a false claim. He is using a ritual. It is not a Roman ritual; it is a Jewish ritual, the idea of washing your hands, washing your feet. We see that in the Old Testament. Going into the tabernacle or the temple the high priest is going to wash his hands, wash his feet. It's a picture of cleansing, that he is free from any guilt in this particular manner.

And then another time in John 19:4, he will attempt to avoid executing Jesus and he goes out to the crowd and says he has found no fault in Him. Then another time in John 19:6 again goes out and claimed that he has found no fault in Him. Again and again and again he claims Jesus has done nothing worthy of death; he finds no fault in Him. The man is innocent, but he is under such political pressure from the situation and from the Sanhedrin that he will eventually just fold. The way the he tries to avoid this initially here is to give them a choice. He's going to fall back on this custom of releasing a criminal. This is described in Matthew 27:15, 16 and he's going to offer them this, as it is translated in the New King James "notorious prisoner". It really means somebody who is well known. And his name really isn't his name, it's more of a title; it's Barabbas. This is the choice now. The word "Barabbas": bar is the Aramaic for son; abbas is the Aramaic and Hebrew word for father.

What this shows is that Barabbas is really a counterfeit, a false Messiah. He is not called that per se in the text, but that's what this language indicates. His name means "son of the father", which I put in lowercase here, and he is giving the option between this pseudo-son of the father, and Jesus who is the real Son of the Father and the Son of God.

Matt 27:15, 16 ^NASB  Now at {the} feast the governor was accustomed to release for the people {any} one prisoner whom they wanted. At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas.

He is a rebel against Rome. He is one of many Jews who were fighting against the rule and the authority of Rome. He had also committed murder in this rebellion. Mark puts it this way: Mark 15:7 ^NASB The man named Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection.

So here is the choice. Are they going to look for someone who is really acting along the lines of their political view of the Messiah? That's what was going on. If you remember back when Jesus started his ministry. After the miracle at the wedding at Cana he went to Jerusalem. It was the time of Passover. That's the first time he cleansed the temple and through the money changers out and He performed many signs, John tells us. There were many people who believed as a result of those signs. Then the text says, "but Jesus didn't trust himself to them". That's because even though they saved because they believed in him, they had not learned enough to have their thinking changed from thinking about the Messiah as a political figure who would free them from the tyranny of Rome, instead of a Messiah who would pay the penalty for their sins, and free them spiritually. Jesus was never going to trust Himself to those who still had that political agenda.

That's what most of the people wanted they wanted. This happens throughout time. People want the wrong thing in their leaders. Most of the time they want somebody who's going to give them everything, or somebody who's going to make life easier for them and make all sorts of promises, rather than somebody who's going to enforce a personal accountability and responsibility on people.

Barabbas is one of those rebels that existed in Israel at the time and he wants to overthrow the power of Rome. And that's what they want. That's what their preconceived notion of a Messiah is. It's not somebody who's teaching spiritual truth, offering them the kingdom of God and teaching them that they need to repent and obey God spiritually.

The question that they had to face is, are you going to accept the true Messiah or a substitute messiah, and we see the same thing today. There are different kinds of substitute messiahs. In the end times during the tribulation there will be a false prophet who is a false Christ. There is also the Antichrist. The word means a substitute Messiah. You have a political leader and you have a religious leader, both of whom act like false Christs. There is the warning in the Olivet discourse. Jesus said there will be many who will come in my name; there will be many false messiahs that will appear during the Tribulation.

The issue for people is always distinguishing the true Messiah from these false messiahs. And we have a another form of a false messiah that has been gaining traction over the last 15 or 20 years, especially in Europe and to some degree here, and that is the Muslim Jesus, Isa. The Muslim Jesus is not the biblical Jesus anymore than the Muslim god, Allah is to be related to the biblical God, El, even though there is a cognate similarity between Allah and the word El. The word El for God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who loves the Jews and promises a free gift of forgiveness and salvation in the Old Testament. That is not the Allah of the Quran. The Allah of the Quran hates Jews and Christians, he mandates that Muslims kill all Jews and Christians. And there is no forgiveness of sin in Islam. The only peace in Islam is a military submission to the law of the imams and the radical leaders of Islam. It is a false religion. They offer a false Jesus.

This is becoming manifested today in Europe, for example. Many of the mainstream, extremely liberal denominations are putting out these various feelers to come together in an ecumenical way with Islam because we all worship the same Jesus, we just have a different slant on it. This is called Chrislam, the CHRIS from Christ and the LAM from Islam. And it shows up in various liberal Protestant denominations. If you want to learn more about this, we are going to have a special speaker this year at the Chafer Conference, the pastors' conference in March 12-14. He is an ethnic Iranian and he came here with his parents just before the Shah fell back in the late 70s when he was in his early 20s, late teens, he became a Christian. He's now a pastor and he is very well known in terms of what he teaches about what's really going on in Islam, what they believe, what the agenda is, and he is going to be our keynote speaker during the Chafer Conference.

There's an article in the Gatestone Institute today by Soren Kern talking about this very topic of this conflict in Europe. They want to have a Christmas that promotes the Muslim Jesus, this total compromise that is taking place at a cultural level because there's a rejection of Jesus. The issue in human history is, which Jesus are you going to accept?

There are other false Jesuses. There's the false Jesus, who's the pacifist, there's the false Jesus who is the Marxist, there's the false Jesus who wants you to work your way to heaven. There are all kinds of false Jesuses, and this is what was happening here. Their choice was, are you going to believe in the Son of God, the Son of the real Eternal Father or are you going to believe in this human insurrectionist?

In we see this offer that comes from Pilate: Matt 27:17 So when the people gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?”

He says therefore when they gather together that's the multitude and the religious leaders. Pilot said to them, whom do you want me to release to you by your office or Jesus who is called Christ and some of the Synoptics He is referred to, as in Mark 15:9, "the King of the Jews". Of course, he doesn't recognize Jesus as the King but that's just the claim, and of course that's the accusation they're bringing because they want the Romans to execute. The Romans aren't going to execute Him for blasphemy, claiming to be the son of God and to be totally divine. What the Romans will crucify Him for is if He is a threat to Rome. This is the charge that they have manufactured to bring before Pilate. But Pilate understands what's really going on here, that this is not about what Jesus has done or not done, it's not about His claims to hitting political claims that he might have; it is about the fact that He is a threat to the power base of the religious leaders and the Sanhedrin and the criminal enterprises of Annas. They're jealous of their power and they want Jesus taken out of the way. In both Mark and Matthew we are told that Pilate understood that the reason they wanted him crucified was because of envy because of jealousy. Even though he understands what's really going on his hands are tied because of the political and religious realities.

Then there is a sort of an interlude that takes place. As he is trying to decide what to do, his wife comes in. Now Pilate's wife and the wife of a procurator would not come in and interrupt things, but she comes in and she is distressed and she approaches him and she says don't have anything to do with that just man. I don't think that means that she is a believer, but she has had a dream, possibly God has providentially allowed this, and it is caused her great distress. She is warning her husband not to have anything to do with this: this is just trouble if you give into this. But again, there's not much he can do. He tries and yet he's up against the religious leaders who were manipulating the masses.

In Matthew 27:20 we read, "But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death."

There's a dynamic going on with his huge crowd. The religious leaders are in the middle of them and they're going around drumming up support for the crucifixion of Jesus. They are building this argument, maybe they are even bribing people, promising them things, giving them a financial gifts; it doesn't state that but this is how that sort of thing works to get the masses riled up against Jesus.

Pilate comes out again in verse 21 and says, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.”

They have rejected Jesus. They rejected His claims to be the Son of God who would bring them salvation and bring in the kingdom, and they choose the wrong choice. They choose Barabbas. Again, the issue is, as Pilate frames it, what shall he do with Jesus? After they choose Barabbas he says, "What then shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?"

This is the question for every human being. What will you do with Jesus? Will you accept Him for who He claimed to be, the eternal Son of God who entered into human history for the purpose of going to the cross to die for our sins? Are you going to try to create a false Christ and say that this Jesus was a good man, this Jesus was a political revolutionary, this Jesus is some form of proto-Marxist who wants to give everybody the same level of living, this Jesus was a pacifist, or, this Jesus, who was really a Muslim? Of course, Islam didn't come along for another 600 years, but that doesn't matter. They want to claim that Abaham, Isaac and Jacob were Muslims and Moses was a Muslim. They are basically thieves. They just want to steal everything out of Judaism and Christianity, and make it their own. But that's what Satan does. I think Satan is the real architect of Islam.

Matthew 27:22 ^NASB Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Crucify Him!”

Whenever I read that I think of a of a football game when the opposing team looks like they're going to score and everybody starts chanting defense, defense, defense. Well this is the same thing. They're just chanting "crucify Him, crucify Him, crucify Him".

It's at this point that Pilate asks, "What evil has he done?" There's no fault and they cry out all the more, saying, let Him be crucified, and were going to stop there because at this point Pilate will authorize the scourging of Jesus and from this point on, everything marches inexorably to the cross. The scourging beating the intensified mocking, I want to cover all of this up to the crucifixion in one session so will do that next week on the morning of New Year's Eve

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