Luke 23

Luke 23:18

, THE MAN FOR WHOM CHRIST DIED Luke 23:18. MARIE CORELLI in her volume entitled, “Barabbas”, describes the man, the dark dungeon in which he was incarcerated, and the day preceding his liberation. She says, “It was a long, sultry, Syrian day. The heavy heat was almost insupportable and the poisonous stench oozed up from the damp earth-floors of the Jewish prison,” which, according to her description, was a deep, dark dungeon, lighted at only a single point by a ray that in day-time pushed itself through the single aperture which acted as an air passage to the foul den where he was caged. On a pallet of straw; in one corner, for the greater part of the time, the wretched man lay, who is pictured by this authoress, as tall, once massive in frame, but now emaciated, pale, poisoned and starving and made more repulsive still by the scowl that had come into his brow, and a spirit of resentment displayed in his deep black eyes. She represents him as being imprisoned in consequence of the killing of a Pharisee, to which deed he was incited by his love for Judith Iscariot, the sister of our Lord’s betrayer. But, of course, as to this motive, the Bible is silent, and it is not to be supposed that Marie Corelli has any other occasion of her claim than that of adding zest to her volume, and employing the poet’s license of stating fiction as if it were fact.

What we know about Barabbas, and practically all that we know about him, is recorded in the four Gospels; and strange to say, everyone of them has given place to the report of his part in the delivery and death of Jesus Christ. And as, between these reports, there is such agreement, one can only explain the coincidence by accepting the skeptic’s view that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, first conferred and agreed together as to what their Gospels should contain; or else that each was so inspired by the Spirit as to write in perfect conformity with his fellow chroniclers. To me the latter explanation is sufficient, and altogether satisfactory; and I propose to conform what I have to say about Barabbas to the plain statements of these four Gospels. WAS GUILTY. On this point the Gospels are agreed. Matthew speaks of him as “a notable” or notorious “prisoner”. Mark says, “One named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection”. Luke practically affirms the same. He speaks of him as a man who for “a certain sedition made in the city and for murder was cast into prison”, while John says, “Now Barabbas was a robber”.He had been in rebellion. Cunningham Geikie speaks of him as “the son of a rabbi who had apparently been compromised through religious fanaticism, in one of the countless petty revolts which incessantly harassed the Romans.

He was no common robber but a zealot, who in mistaken ardor for the honor of the law, had taken part in a tumult, during which some Roman sympathizers or soldiers had been killed.” Edersheim intimates that he might have been a political antichrist, since the name Bar-Abbas signifies “son of the father”. But whoever he was, and whatever might have been his purpose in this revolt against government, he was a rebel, a leader of a rebellion against Caesar’s government. Of that he had been convicted, his guilt being established by due process of law. He stands, therefore, as a type of those who rebel against God and against moral government; and who say of Christ, as he said of Caesar, “We will not have this Man reign over us”.Do you remember how the Prophet Isaiah speaks of the Israel of old, as being a subject of the “loving kindnesses of the Lord”, upon whom he had bestowed the greatest goodness, “according to His mercies”, for He said,“Surely they are My people, children that will not lie: so He was their Saviour. “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them and carried them all the days of old. “But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit” (Isaiah 63:8-10). A little later He speaks through the mouth of the same Prophet,“I have spread out My hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; “A people that provoketh Me to anger continually to My face” (Isaiah 65:2-3 f.). And if the Israel of old, departing from God, were regarded such rebels, is he not in greater rebellion who says to the Saviour of men, “I will not have Thee reign over me”.To rebellion Barabbas had added murder. Mark says he had “committed murder in the insurrection”, while Luke claims he was cast into prison “for sedition and murder”. One sin always paves the way for another. When Cain disobeyed God and refused to bring a bloody offering, it seemed an act which would have no consequences beyond itself. But alas! It led him who refused to shed the blood of a lamb at the command of the Lord, to spill his brother’s blood in violation of the same Divine will.

It is a severe thing to say, and yet a very truthful thing, that in this act Barabbas was even a better type of the sinner. When Peter preached his Pentecostal sermon, he charged his auditors with having taken the Christ “and by wicked hands crucified and slain Him”.

Not that every man of the thousands that made up his audience had actually participated in driving the nails, for that was Rome’s part, and these Jews never laid the weight of a finger to it, but they rejected Him, and they cried for His crucifixion, and God through Peter called them to account for it. We are apt to think that whole episode two thousand years old, and forget that it is being enacted daily by those who reject Jesus, and thereby “Crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame”.Dr. Lorimer called attention to a picture in the Art Gallery of the Columbian Exposition, wherein a European artist illustrated the thought we have just presented, by a production entitled, “The Descent from the Cross”, which was original and daring; and yet containing a definite charge of murder against the present-day rejecters of Jesus Christ. The picture of Jesus is much like that of the old Masters, but in all the circumstances of locality, costume, and conduct, he has changed the scenes and made them modern. The city of the crucifixion is not Jerusalem but Paris; the Calvary is not the Hill of Golgotha, but of Montmartre. The people also are not Jews and Romans, but French.

Instead of being dressed as were the ancients, they are in the garb of the hour. No man can study the picture without seeing the artist’s purpose.

He wanted the Christless sinners of France to see that they were crucifying unto themselves Jesus of Nazareth, and possibly to raise in their minds the question Paul addressed to the Hebrews,“If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins; “But a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. “He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:26-29). This rebellion and murder had resulted in Barabbas’ arrest. Sin will out; the guilty man is always near his judgment day, if not already enduring it. Strive to cover up our conduct as we may, it will come abroad. Justice has so many and such competent detectives, that the rebel and the murderer cannot long escape arrest. Some years ago three men were confined in jail at Albany, Ore. They had wrecked the Southern Express at a point between San Francisco and Portland.

Shortly after this event, a man called at the office of a physician to have a dislocated arm put into place. While under the influence of chloroform, he told the whole story, not only making known the part he had taken in it, but naming also his accomplices.So long as God lives, sin will be compelled to come to judgment. And when one is tempted to commit it, thinking to cover it up, he ought to remember the words of Jesus, “That which is spoken in the ear in the closets shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops”. And when one is tempted to commit it, thinking that in some way he may escape its consequences, Paul’s injunction to the Galatians ought to flash with restraining influence upon his memory, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”. WAS . The condemnation had already taken place. He had come into the court; the evidence had been heard; the sentence passed. Here again he stands as a type of the unsaved man. Who can affirm his innocence? It is written, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, and again, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”; then against this admission stands the sentence, “The soul that sinneth it shall die”. The fact that one may be going on with his life in the old routine way ought not to deceive him into supposing that sentence is not already passed upon his sin.

Many of you doubtless have read “Vathek” by Wm. Beckford, and you may remember how that Caliph is pictured on one of the pages speaking of all the magnificence of his palace; of all the beauties, within and without; of his luxurious, even voluptuous, living; and the idolatry to which he eventually came; and the pride that filled his heart, bringing him to believe that even supernatural existences were subject to his will.

He says, “I began to think, as these unhappy monarchs around had already thought, that the vengeance of Heaven was asleep; when at once the thunder burst my structures asunder and precipitated me hither, * * where I am in torments, ineffable torments! An unrelenting fire preys on my heart.”The day is already on when every unforgiven soul is sentenced for sin. If we do not hear the chain rattling, nor feel the hot fires of judgment, let us not therefore conclude that no such sentence exists, for as Peter said, touching the Lord’s tardiness in executing sentence, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”.With Barabbas punishment had already begun. Marie Corelli’s picture of the loathsome prison from which the Roman soldiers dragged him is justified by the facts of history. At the time of this text he was in some dungeon, while the people without were crying of Christ, “crucify Him”, “release unto us Barabbas”. If that rebel but moved in his cell, he rattled the chains that were eating their way into his ankles.

And say what you will, every sinner is already in judgment. We speak at times of a final judgment, but while we may distinguish the tragedies of that great day from the trials of the present hour, many of them are of a piece with it and a part of it.Joseph Cook once quoted from the traveler Rancke a theory prevalent among the tribes of Greenland.

He affirmed that the men of that northland say, “If a sorcerer will make a stirrup out of a strip of seal-skin and wind it around his limbs, three times about his heart, twice about his neck, seven times about his forehead, and then knot it between his eyes, when the lamps are put out at night, he may rise into space and fly whithersoever his leading passion dictates.” And the man or woman who wraps self about with sin until the limbs are fettered thereby and the heart is encased, and the head is bound and the eyes are blinded, will find that the lamps are going out, and that when he rises it is only to follow the leading of some evil passion which, when it is satisfied, will impose immediately its penalty of suffering, and send its subject into the dungeon and fetter him with the chains of judgment. Years ago, Parnell was the brilliant, trusted leader of the Irish cause in the English parliament. But like Sampson of old, he dallied with sin and speedily his locks were shorn, and he went out of that honored body disgraced, condemned, changed and chained. Justin McCarthy, who had known him in the days of his innocence and power as a man of superb self-restraint, a born commander-in-chief, speaks of his after-condition as that of “an incapacity of self-control which brought him to indulge even in the most ignoble and humiliating brawls”. Sometimes people threaten their conduct with judgments, saying of the lusts of the flesh that they will all eventually bring their condemnation, but he is shortsighted indeed who does not see that it is not a question of the future; they are all attended by justice herself. Immediately upon their commission she begins her execution.But the end was not yet.

Barabbas looked for the cross to come. He never imagined that that wretched cell with its fetid air, its deadening damp, its haunting darkness, was all.

Every time he climbed to the top of that cell and peered out through the crack that admitted a little air and a shaft of light, he looked away, wondering how far it was to Golgotha; just how he would be enabled to endure the unthinkable agonies of the cross. I am not of those who attempt to define what Jesus meant when, speaking of the great judgment, He said of unbelievers, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment”. But, when from day to day, I study the consequences of sin in this life, and see the sufferings of body, the agonies of mind, the anguish of soul, coming now upon those who violate God’s commands, and, rejecting His Son Jesus Christ, commend themselves to sin, I can but wonder what may be the judgments that shall at last awake impenitent men.It is related that Chosroes, king of Persia, in conversation with two philosophers and the Vizier, asked what situation of man is most to be deplored. One of the philosophers maintained that it was old age accompanied with extreme poverty; the other thought it was to have the body oppressed by disease, the mind worn out and the heart broken by a series of misfortunes. “I know a condition more to be pitied,” said the Vizier, “it is that of him who has passed through life without doing good, and who, unexpectedly surprised by death, is soon to appear before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge.”But we are glad to be able to finish this discourse by calling your attention to yet another truth—Barabbas was guilty; Barabbas was condemned, but,JESUS CHRIST IN HIS STEAD. This substitution must have surprised him. Marie Corelli’s description of this bad man’s amazement, when he learned that the man who had seemed to him to represent all the stateliness, all the whiteness, all the majesty of the lofty and spacious Tribunal, together with the light that fell glimmeringly through the shining windows, so that such radiance, such power, such glorious union of perfect beauty and strength in one human form as Barabbas had never seen or imagined—when he learned that that man stood in his stead he was overwhelmed.Among the most graphic things that Mr. Moody ever said is a picture of Barabbas at the time of this text: “I have often thought what a night Barabbas must have spent just before the day when Christ was crucified. As the sun goes down, he says to himself: (To-morrow!—only to-morrow) and I must die on the cross. They will hang me up before a crowd of people; they will drive nails through my hands and feet; they will break my legs with bars of iron; and in that awful torture I shall die before this time to-morrow, and go up to the judgment with all my crimes upon me.’ ” Maybe they let his mother come to see him once more before dark. Perhaps he had a wife and children and they came to see him for the last time.

He couldn’t sleep at all that night. He could hear somebody hammering in the prison-yard, and knew they must be making the cross.

He would start up every now and then thinking he heard the footsteps of the officers coming for him. At last the light of morning looks in through the bars of his prison. “To-day—this very day—they will open that door and lead me away to be crucified!”Pretty soon he hears them coming. No mistake this time. They are unbarring the iron door. He hears them turning the key in the rusty lock. The door swings open; there are the soldiers. Good-by to life and hope! Death, horrible death, now!— and, after death, what will there be then?

The officer of the guard speaks to him, “Barabbas, you are free!” He hears the strange words, but they make very little impression on him. He is so near dead with fear and horror, that the good news doesn’t reach him. He hears it, but thinks it is a foolish fancy. He is asleep and dreaming. He stands gazing a moment at the soldiers, and then he comes to himself. “Don’t laugh at me! Don’t make sport of me! Take me away and crucify me; but don’t tear my soul to pieces!” Again the officer speaks: “You are free! Here, the door is open; go out; go home.” Now he begins to take in the truth; but it is so wonderful a thing to get out of the clutches of the Roman law, that he is afraid to believe the good news.

And so he begins to doubt and to ask how it can be. They tell him that Pilate has promised the Jews the release of one prisoner that day; and the Jews have chosen him instead of one Jesus of Nazareth who was condemned to be crucified.Now the poor man begins to weep. This breaks his heart. He knows this Jesus. He has seen Him do some of His miracles. He was in the crowd picking pockets when Jesus fed the five thousand hungry people. “What! that just Man to die—and I, a thief, a highwayman, a murderer, to go free!” And in the midst of his joy at his own release, his heart breaks at the thought that his life is saved at such a cost. Sinner, that is the Gospel! Christ died for you, “the Just for the unjust”. “He was bruised for our iniquities, and by His stripes we are healed”.

Come out of your prison; throw off the chains of sin. You were justly condemned, but Jesus died for you. Let your heart break in penitence; weep tears of love and joy.”This substitution must have shamed him also. Here again Marie Corelli expresses the thought of Scripture. She pictures him as groping through the darkness that lay over all the land just before Jesus died. Making his way up to where he supposed the Cross stood, he stretched out his hands and murmured, “Where art Thou?

O Thou who diest in my wretched stead, where art Thou?” And she says, as he knelt in this supernatural darkness before the unseen dying “Man of Nazareth”, an age seemed to have passed—a cycle of time burdened with histories—histories of the soul and secret conscience, which are of more weight in God’s countings than the histories of empires. The people had released him; they had hailed him the liberated thief and murderer, with acclamations.

True! but what was all this popular clamor worth when in his own heart he knew himself to be guilty of the utmost that could be done to him? Oh, the horrible, horrible burden of recognized sin! The dragging, leaden weight that ties the immortal spirit down to grossness and materialism when it would fain wing its way to the highest attainment! The crushing consciousness of being driven back into darkness out of light supernal! of being thrust away, as it were, with loathing, out of the sight and knowledge of the Divine! This was a part of the anguish of Barabbas—a mental anguish he had never felt till now, and this was why he almost envied his former comrade Hanan for having been elected to die in the companionship of the “Nazarene”. All these thoughts of his were purely instinctive; he could not reason out his emotions, because they were unlike himself and new to him.

Nevertheless, if he uttered a prayer at all while kneeling in that solemn gloom, it was for death, not life.Such is the shame of sin! and yet, such was our Saviour’s substitutionary sacrifice that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree! In that blessed fact faith rests, and as Christ hung on Calvary in Barabbas’ stead, so He suffered there for you and me, and for every man who will accept Him,“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. “Moreover the Law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:20-21).