The sermon 'No Fault in Him' by Scott Brown examines the narrative of Jesus' trial before Pilate as depicted in John Chapter 18. It explores key themes such as the innocence of Jesus, the hypocrisy of the Jews, and Pilate’s struggle to find fault in Jesus. The sermon emphasizes Jesus' declaration that His kingdom is not of this world, highlighting the spiritual nature of His reign and authority. Through this passage, the speaker discusses the concept of truth, as Jesus claims to be the embodiment of truth, contrasting with Pilate's relativism. The sermon also delves into Jesus' substitutionary atonement, using the release of Barabbas as a metaphor for humanity's redemption through Christ. Furthermore, it reflects on contemporary issues, drawing parallels between the societal and governmental challenges faced during the pandemic and the eternal truths of Jesus' kingdom. The sermon encourages believers to align with the truth of Christ, recognize His innocence and substitutionary role, and reflect on their own spiritual integrity.

Open your Bible to John chapter 18 and find verse 28. We'll pick up this remarkable narrative. With verse 28. Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning, but they themselves did not go into the Praetorium lest they should be defiled but that they may eat the Passover. Pilate then went out to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man?

They answered and said to him, If he were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered him to you. Then Pilate said to them, You take him and judge him according to your law. Therefore the Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which he spoke, signifying by what death he would die. Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to him, Are you the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, are you speaking for yourself about this or did others tell you this concerning me?

Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here.

Pilate therefore said to him, Are you a king then? Jesus answered, You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Pilate said to him, What is truth?

And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no fault in him at all. But you have a custom that I should release someone to you at the Passover. Do you therefore want me to release to you the king of the Jews? Then they all cried again saying, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for declaring truth to us, for explaining to us the way the world really is and how one might know the greatness of your kingdom and to be wrapped within it and carried along and so we thank you Father that you put these before us at this moment. We pray that you would bless the preaching of your word to our hearts and teach us the ways in which we should go. Correct our thoughts in the way that we ought and help us Father to know how to understand these great things that are before us. Amen.

Well these words contain many pictures of the gospel of Jesus Christ and I put a title on this sermon I find no fault in him but I could have called it you know my kingdom is not of this world I could have called it I am the truth I could have called it Barabbas But I think you can see there are many themes running in this passage of scripture and So I pray that I'll be able to bring them out. I think they're very helpful. They've been very helpful to me, you know, as the news is telling us all day long, every day that you're going to die, that you will kill people if you go outside your house, and that the government is your ultimate ruler. And this morning we're taking back to the truth of the death and the truth about the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The truth about the truth and the truth about Jesus' innocence and his substitutionary atonement.

And you can see each of these points in your outline that you have in front of you. These things have been very helpful to me, very steadying to me in the face of all the headlines. Here are just a few of the headlines that I've clipped out from major news sources, not backwater news sources. World Health official may have to come and remove your children from your home and isolate them. Dr.

Fauci sets the stage for mandatory vaccines. Bill Gates wants to prohibit all mass gatherings without vaccinations. Church members fined $500 for drive-in church in Greenville, Mississippi. Michigan bans travel between residences. Boston's suburb threatens $100 fines to anyone walking in the wrong direction.

Kentucky will track down Easter worshippers using license plates. Passenger dragged off a Philadelphia bus by 10 police for not wearing a face mask. California sheriff can arrest and fine people $1, 000 for not wearing masks. Kentucky governor creates hotline to call in social distancing violations. Atlanta freeway signs post call in line to report social distancing violations.

Jane Goodall says disrespect for animals caused the pandemic. Even gorillas are under lockdown. These are actual headlines in major news outlets just from the last three days. What do we think about all these things? And I think that we're before a passage of scripture that that's very helpful.

We should thank God's thoughts after him considering the centrality of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, the supremacy of the kingdom of God, and the requirement of the church to walk in and talk in the truth. It's the truth that sets you free. It's the truth that Jesus Christ embodied and has left for us in his word that we might be guided by it. And the events that are in this passage compose the testimony that death has been conquered, that sin is paid for, that the greatest and most damaging force in the world and in your life has been neutralized by Jesus Christ. And that the Church of Jesus Christ has what I'll just call a herd immunity to the killing virus of sin.

And Jesus has put an end to sin and this is what this whole trial is all about that we might be the righteousness of God whether we are healthy or whether we are sick. We deserve all the abuse that Jesus deserved. He took the punishment that we should have gotten. You can look at each moment of abuse and slander and maltreatment and consider that you and I should have deserved this same kind of treatment. Jesus Christ bore our shame and he is bearing our shame in this passage of scripture.

And it's a joy to proclaim the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We do that every Sunday. We proclaim it in our preaching, and then we conclude every service with the Lord's Supper. And we normally lead the congregation in the Lord's Supper. And with this ordinance, we explicitly and very graphically engage all the senses of taste and touch and sight and smell to remind us of his death until he comes.

And this is what we believe, this is our confidence. It's the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now this morning we will not be observing the Lord's Supper but we will be remembering his death as we go through this section in John 18, and we will do the same next week and the following week as we can continue to consider the suffering, the trials, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today, we're really taking back to the darkest day in history, the condemnation and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And we have such promises delivered to us.

1 Peter 318 speaks of this moment that we're reading about now. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit. Now, the context of these principles is the trials that Jesus has endured. His three ecclesiastical trials have been completed and judgment has been handed down, death for blasphemy. It's fully recorded in Luke chapter 22.

Annas and Caiaphas are acting as judges in Jesus' ecclesiastical trial, but in due time, they will both stand before Jesus Christ and be finally judged. They're in a very dangerous position. And now Jesus is being taken to his three civil trials, first by Pilate, then by Herod, and then by Pilate again. It's Now daybreak, it's probably 6.30 or 7 o'clock in the morning. At the same time, the Jews are celebrating Passover.

When morning comes, the Jews take Jesus to Pilate. Roman law demanded that trials not be conducted till daybreak and so the Jews waited and to be first in line to see Pilate. He was the governor. All of this really is captured in the Apostles Creed. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

Now of these three civil trials, John in his gospel leaves out the account of the trial before Herod and he focuses alone on Jesus before Pilate. So John conflates both of these and Pilate is the local authority. He is the one who's going to throw the switch. Pilate is the lesser magistrate who has the authority to collect taxes and to prosecute evildoers. And he is going to make the final ruling.

And so that's the context. Now I'd like to get into the story here. The storyline of course begins in verse 28 where the hypocrisy of the Jews is revealed as Jesus is brought to the Praetorium to be judged. He enters, the Jews stay outside. Verse 28, then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium.

And it was early morning, but they themselves did not go into the praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. So here, here at daybreak, the Jews are desiring the death penalty to be declared by the Romans and They by by Roman law judgments had to take place under specific accusations and they are at the Praetorium. This is the place of judgment. This is a judgment hall. But the Jews wouldn't go in.

And we have to ask why didn't they go in? And we're not told here in this passage of scripture, we do know that they had a law not to touch a dead body. They believed that the Gentiles flushed aborted babies into their waste system, and since they were not able to touch a dead body, they would not go into a Gentile home. There was no law against going into a Gentile home. They invented this law, maybe even on the spot, but it was not against the law of God to go into a gentile law court or a gentile home or the palace of a gentile ruler, but they wouldn't do it.

The Jews were very proud of their law keeping. I think they were looking for every possible excuse and they were They kept the law in the points that they preferred. Jesus tells us that they ignored the weightier matters of the law, but not their favorite parts of the law. Here they're keeping the feast of the Passover, but they were they are murdering the Savior of the world, the Passover lamb. The Jews are cleaning the outside of the cup in this scene here and we should all ask ourselves now in what way do we do this very same thing?

We clean the outside of the cup, we capture our favorite laws and ignore the ones that are more constraining to us. I like the way that Andrew Bonar spoke of this. He said, either ritualism will banish Christ, or Christ will banish ritualism. We all pick and choose what laws to follow and it's a matter of our fallen nature. We avoid things that God has commanded because of our blindness, because of our fear of obedience, and somehow we feel like if we really obey God that something will be deprived of us, that we'll miss some joy, we will be deprived of some good thing, which is just such a fraudulent idea.

But John is revealing really the heartbreaking reality of dead religion. It looks good on the outside, but empty on the inside. And John is recording it right before our eyes. You know yesterday I was walking in one of our pastures and I saw a really large oak tree that had blown down a few weeks ago and it must have been at least 30 inches in diameter. It was a very large tree.

I looked at it on the ground, and I was looking at how long and how big it was, and I thought to myself, I said to myself, That's a big tree. And then I looked over to the stump where it originated, from which it had blown down. And the tree broke off maybe six or seven feet in the air. But it was completely hollow inside, completely hollow. Maybe only three or four inches around the perimeter of that tree was wood, but it looked so good on the outside.

And, you know, I could have crawled through the pipe that it actually created. It was just very, very, very large. But on the outside of the tree, the bark was healthy. It looked good on the outside, but it was sick on the inside. And that's exactly how hypocrisy works.

It's easy to look good on the inside and the outside can be full of dead and empty spiritual conditions. So Jesus is walking into this situation. The Jews are outside continuing to clean the outside of the cup while they are prosecuting the Prince of life. So then in the next in the next scene, Pilate asks for the accusation. Now Jesus is before Pilate and John only records this moment.

Pilate is the prominent figure in this narrative here. Verse 29, Pilate then went out to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? So Pilate goes out to meet Jesus and apparently the whole Sanhedrin is outside. There's 70 men there most likely at least and and he is the the prefect of Judea. The The prefect was granted power to judge with sole authority over criminals for execution.

He was responsible for making sure that taxes were collected and that the people were orderly and loyal to the Roman Empire. He married well. He married into royalty. He married Claudia. He was a cruel leader.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that he brought Roman shields with the image of the emperor into the city and it absolutely enraged the Jews. He didn't have a very good relationship with the Jews. They were so angry, the Jews were at Pilate that they surrounded his house and they wouldn't move for five days. And finally he brought in soldiers threatening to cut their heads off and they laid down on their backs and opened up their necks waiting to be executed. And he couldn't find the stomach to do it, and so he let them go and he removed the images of the emperor on the shields.

And then he took treasures of the Jews out of the temple and protests erupted again and he he sent soldiers into the crowd and Josephus says that many of the protesters were clubbed to death. Pilate had no love for the Jews and particularly Galileans. He seemed to have a particular hatred for Galileans. In Luke chapter 13, we learn how profane he was and hatefully was toward those who were from Galilee. And of course remember Jesus was a Galilean.

He murdered some of them and mingled their blood with his sacrifices to his gods. And this is recorded in Luke chapter 13 verse 2. And Jesus is using this as an illustration, this scene as an illustration of the fact that you shouldn't think that all calamity is for your own personal judgment. Jesus said to the crowd, Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no.

But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. So this is the man who takes up all the attention in this section of the Gospel of John. Now, for about a hundred years, liberal scholars contended that Pilate was a fictitious character and of course the underlying proposition particularly coming out of German liberal theologians that was that the Bible is full of myths and the situations and the characters or just fabrications of deranged minds who were trying to create some kind of movement. And the evidence that they presented that there is no such person as Pilate is that there was no archaeological evidence to verify. But then in 1961, an Italian archaeologist was excavating ancient Caesarea.

By the way, in the text that Mike read earlier in the book of Acts, it all takes place in Caesarea. And they found a limestone block that had an inscription on it and the inscription read, in honor of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea. So exploded before our eyes, you know, were hundreds of books of German criticism against the Bible. And this stone is actually called the pilot stone and it's on display today in the Israel Museum. So Pilate was real he's a historical figure the Bible records real history you can count on it and no matter what the pundits say.

Now the Jews I think made a wrong call here they seem to be hoping that Pilate probably for hate his hatred of the Jews they knew he hated he hated people from Galilee and I it seems to me that they just felt that he would take their word for it and just execute Jesus. Not so they miscalculated. And so Pilate asks them, why are you bringing him to me? And they answer, if he were not an evil doer We would not have delivered him to you so I Think the Roman rulers knew that he was not guilty. He was the sinless spotless lamb of God led to slaughter to take away the sins of the world.

The Jews misjudged the situation and Pilate actually refuses to rule. You can see that in verse 31. Then Pilate said to them, You take him and judge him according to your law. Therefore the Jews said to him, It's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. And The reason that they said this was because God was controlling their duplicity.

They said this that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which spoke, which he spoke, signifying what death he would die. We'll get to that in a minute. So he refuses to judge and commands the Jews to judge them by their own law. Pilate is continuing to skate on his thin ice, trying as best he can, you know, not to bring the Romans in to deal with the tumult that is in his region. But the Jews actually lied to Pilate in a sense.

They said it's not lawful. Well, The requirement for capital punishment was well known to them in Leviticus 24 verse 16. It's communicated long before the bringing of the law in Leviticus 24. The death penalty was enforced as far back as Genesis 9 from the very beginning. It's very clear Matt is made in the image of God and this is what this is what makes murder so despicable.

By the way they had no problem stoning Stephen in just a few months later. The Talmud, the Jewish book, the Talmud says that Roman law prohibited the Jews to execute. But let's be really clear, they did it when they wanted to do it. In fact they at one point took up stones to stone Jesus. So they really were not against stoning someone.

They weren't against capital punishment and they tried to pass the buck to Pilate. But God prophesied through the mouth of Jesus Christ that they would not stone him, that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which he spoke signifying what death he would die. In Matthew 20 verse 19 Jesus tells his disciples the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify. Jesus prophesied his crucifixion, not his stoning, and the third day he will rise again. So the Jews were operating according to a God-ordained, sovereignly controlled lie in order to try to get out of their responsibility.

If the Jews had stoned Jesus, his prophecy regarding the way he would die would be false because Jesus did prophesy his crucifixion. And this is just another manifestation of God hardening the hearts of those who do not love him. And so here we find that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah who fulfills all the Word of God and every word that he utters is true and it comes true. He is the Son of God and he is the one who made the world. He is the exact representation of God and all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.

And this scene just demonstrates the power and the glory and the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. And then in the next scene here, Pilate returns to question Jesus again in Jesus' final trial in verses 33 through 36. In verse 33 you read, Then Pilate entered the praetorium again, called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews? Now he left and during this time he was delivered over to Herod for his trial. John leaves this out and he comes back again here to continue his questioning in his final trial.

And Pilate still wants out of the situation when he comes back. He gets more and more harsh and toward Jesus, but he does come back and he asks, are you the king of the Jews? And Pilate makes it clear that he's not much in loop with the Jews. He says, am I a Jew? I'm not a Jew.

I don't know about these things. I don't want to have anything to do with these things. I'm not a Jew. You are the Jews. You take care of him.

That's what he wants to do. And then the Lord Jesus Christ in his conversation with Pilate reveals a number of really important things that are critical for us. And the first thing is that his kingdom is not of this world. Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews.

But now my kingdom is not of this world." So this declaration is very important. R.C. Sproul points out, and I'll quote him, He did not say that his dominion and authority did not include this world, or that his realm was a transcendent spiritual neverland. This is the same Jesus who affirmed, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. That's in Matthew 28 verse 18.

A.W. Pink explains it in a very similar way. He says, my kingdom is not of this world not my kingdom is not in this world that's very important particularly in the moment that we live in now Jesus was saying that his kingdom is not won through violence and through force the way that the Gentiles win it. He is not an insurrectionist. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus Christ is constantly tearing down the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of man and it's very interesting what we have seen in in in this current moment that we live in by by some force of only God himself the kingdoms of the gods of this world of the entertainment industrial complex and the sports industrial complex and even business has been torn down and and sidelined everyone's kingdom has been shaken but God's kingdom has never shaken and you know the question is you know what do you say to the kings of this earth when you believe my kingdom is not of this world? What do you say? Does it mean that you do not say anything to the kings of this world? Well that's not the position that Jesus takes because he speaks to the kings and the kingdoms of this world. John the Baptist is one of the great examples of that as he does preach to the civil magistrate.

It's right for the church to do such a thing. In the 17th century Samuel Rutherford wrote a book called Lex Rex and he attacked the absolutism of the king. The name of the book, Lex Rex, law is king, not the king is law. And what Rutherford says is that the king is subject to the law. He published the book in 1644, and it was finally banned and then burned by Charles II in 1660.

And the whole book really is an argument for the three jurisdictions that God has established, the three governments. There's the church, the family, and the state, and they all have particular authority. And the Bible defines their authority very clearly. The book is really an argument for resistance to the king. He distinguished between the king's authority and the kingship of the king of kings.

And one of his propositions is that a king's authority is established and preserved by the covenant that is made with their subjects and when the king violates that covenant then they they can be resisted. You know Samuel Rutherford was a contributor to the Westminster Confession. He was the only Scottish member of the Westminster Assembly but his the proposition that he Brings in the book is that it's right to rebel and take up with lesser magistrates who are using their power to fight against tyrants. But the truth is this, no one can shake the kingdom of God. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.

He casts out demons from his kingdom. Jesus Christ is the Lord of his kingdom. And he has given us his word to wield as a sword. We don't bear a physical sword. We bear the sword of the Lord, which is the Word of God.

I was just reading this morning in Luke chapter 12, where Jesus is explaining his kingdom, and he says, his kingdom is like a mustard seed. That's very small, but it grows, and it overtakes. And then he said that the kingdom of God is like leaven in bread and how it expands and and and and fills the bread and makes it what it ought to be. And we are citizens of God's everlasting kingdom and we have the Word of God and this is the tool that we use to deal with whatever abuses of the government that come to us we believe that there probably there are at this moment. In Colossians chapter 1 verse 13 You'll find some of the most wonderful, encouraging words about this.

He, Jesus Christ, has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence." Well, the kingdom of God is the kingdom of righteousness and joy and peace and the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom of God is governed by His Word and we have very very clear commands regarding how we relate with the civil government and we have very very clear commands about how we operate in the church and we have very clear commands about how we operate in our families. Praise God for the clarity and the help that he's given us so that we might know how to think through the things that are coming upon us. We know without question that God has called us to honor the king and to submit to every earthly authority because all authorities have been established by God and so we can praise God that he is the one who's established every authority even Herod even Pilate even Nero whom Paul served under and asked and and delivered his command that we ought to obey the civil government. Our view is that we ought to honor and obey the civil government as long as the civil government does not ask us to disobey the Lord. And as you know, we've asked our people to consider how serious it is to rebel against the civil government.

My personal view is that at this very moment, we ought to comply as best we can at this very moment. Time will tell, truth will unfold over time and we'll need to, I think, be flexible to understand what we ought to do in the days to come. And I don't know what we will do in days to come, but God will help us to understand that. And then the Lord Jesus Christ again proclaims himself as the truth in verse 37. His truth is for the world, it's for this world.

I like how our RC Sproul existed. It's not for some spiritual, ethereal truth in Neverland. It's for this land that we live in now. Pilate therefore said to him in verse 37, are you a king then? Jesus answered, you say rightly I am a king.

For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." Now Jesus has already said during the upper room discourse just hours earlier, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. And then Pilate says to Jesus, what is truth? And Jesus has already equipped his disciples to understand this.

The sixth I am statement in John 14 verse 6. I am the truth. I am the way the truth and the life. And here we just find every reason to cleave to the truth that is in Jesus Christ. His truth is communicated in an external testimony that we call the Bible.

And this is absolute truth. If you believe in absolute truth as pilot did not then the people of this world will treat you as intolerant as immoral and dangerous The moral relativism that has completely attempted to dismantle any sense of truth has really taken over our whole society. And the truth-free Taliban is everywhere And we must equip a new generation of Christians to understand that there is truth, there is fixed truth, external objective truth that God has called his people to live by and he has he has established the truth of these various jurisdictions of the church and the family in the state this is truth and it's for Christians to uphold it in their own hearts and in their own lives. Pilot was an ancient relativist. He was saying, I don't know what is truth.

And so we have so many that think that same way today. But Jesus is the truth. And then his innocence is announced in verse 38 at the end of it. It's so remarkable the way that God puts truth in the mouth of the wicked. He does it all the time.

And he does it with Pilate. When Pilate says, I find no fault in him. Now this is repeated in all the narratives that the other gospel writers record. He had no fault in himself And this is so wonderful to contemplate. And I pray that today would be a day of contemplating this matter, that there is no fault in Him.

Well, add up your faults. Name them one by one. You know, our faults come in different categories. Our faults are found in our words, in our deeds. They are found in the way that we relate with our friends, with our spouses.

Our faults are found in the ways that we speak to and relate to our fellow workers, our bosses. Our faults are found in the way that we think about and speak to and operate with our fellow church members. Our faults come out in church life, they come out in our use of time, they come out in our thoughts. Our faults are everywhere. And what is declared here out of the mouth of Pilate is a truth of the gospel and that is the weight of our faults has been borne by Jesus Christ.

He was faultless but our faults all fell upon him. The Jews' accusations failed, and the devil's accusations against those who love Jesus Christ will fail. Jesus Christ was innocent and his innocence is transferred to us. The Bible says that our sins were nailed to the cross. And the Bible goes to great lengths to speak of how comprehensive and vanquishing his bearing of sin was for us.

That our sins are buried in the bottom of the sea. They've been put as far as the east is from the west. They've been thrown behind our backs. They have been stomped by our feet and our sins have been cleansed and forgiven and atoned for. And God puts this truth in the mouth of Pilate.

I find no fault in him. And he carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. And there was no fault found in him. And then finally we find his substitution for Barabbas is very revealing.

Again we find this just remarkably disturbing situation to be a picture of the gospel. The disturbing words of Pilate, the disturbing words of the crowd, the Sanhedrin. And now this disturbing moment where Barabbas is released in the place of Jesus. God uses all of these disturbing things to declare the glory of his grace and he does that with Barabbas and Pilate speaks to the Jews but you have a custom that I should release someone to you at the Passover Do you therefore want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" Here's a guess, my opinion. Pilate was quite happy to release this Galilean so that he would be torn asunder.

He hated the Jews and he even hated the Galileans worse. And then they all cried out saying not this man but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. And that ends the text that we are engaged in. Barabbas was a, if you go to the other passages of scripture that speak of him, there are 11 in the Bible.

He was a murderer. Barabbas was a robber. Barabbas was an insurrectionist he was a dangerous man and he had a terrifyingly selfish past and he and he did deserve to die and Jesus died in his place. And right before our eyes is another picture of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Barabbas is guilty, the innocent is punished, and the guilty goes free.

Very interesting that Barabbas' name literally means son of the father. Yeshua Bar-Aba. The son of the father. So Barabbas is the guilty man who goes free, and he's very much like us. Think of the evil that he was pardoned from, And we can also think of our own evil that we have been pardoned from.

And Jesus said, if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. There's no indication that Barabbas was a Christian, but he stands as a pillar of truth for all Christians to understand how deep the Father's love is for us. Jesus was accused of what Barabbas did. And I think what we see here is a picture of many of the most beautiful and heartwarming things about the gospel. It's reflected in Romans 3 23.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus or Romans 6 23 for the wages of sin is death But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord Or first Peter 318 for Christ also suffered once for sins the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. Well, Barabbas, the cunning, dangerous insurrectionist, is set free. The Apostle Paul speaks about this type of thing to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 2 verse 1, and you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we're by nature children of wrath, just as the others." Well, what do we think of this?

How do we apply all this? I think we've seen the hypocrisy of the Jews set before us to examine our own hypocrisy. We've seen the duplicity of the crowd. We have seen the duplicity of Pilate. We've seen that Jesus' kingdom is not of this world.

We've seen that His truth is for the world. We've seen his innocence being announced by an unbeliever and we see a picture of his substitutionary atonement. Is Jesus' kingdom and is Jesus' truth and his innocence and his substitution yours? Is this yours? In John 1, at the very beginning of our study, we read these words, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." You know, I hope that these things are yours.

Are you waiting for some dramatic moment? Will you ever come to the place where you're holy enough or motivated enough? Is there something keeping you from Christ? Are you waiting for a righteousness of your own to prove your salvation? Are you taking lightly the promises of God that salvation is by faith.

Are you trying to pinpoint the exact moment of salvation? Rather than ask, do I believe now? Are you waiting for something that you'll never have? Enough faith, enough righteousness? These are things that grow.

But the most important question is do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Do you desire to obey Him? Do you love the brethren? Do you want to renounce the world? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

Do you desire to obey Him? Do you love the Brethren? Do you want to renounce the world? Do you believe that Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who is conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. Do you believe that? Well these things are really brought for us here. So, we have a king and his kingdom is not of this world.

It's a kingdom of truth. It's a kingdom of his innocence laid upon his children. And so what do you think of him? Do you find fault in him? If you do find fault in Him, fault will be found in you.

But if you find no fault in Him, then He will find faith in you. And we see that written all over this entire trial, the darkest time in all of history. What a blessing it is to know him, to know the truth being set free. And we are here today to experience a day of meditating upon all these things. I love the words of David, there's a river whose streams make glad the city of God.

Let it be like that today. The Lord reigns. Would you pray with me? Lord, these amazing events telling us so much about ourselves, about your great kingdom, about your great love and the sympathy that you have for sinners, that you would suffer in our place, that you would take the wrath that we deserved, and that you would give us the truth that we might walk in it in the world and to live according to this glorious kingdom that you've established forevermore. And we'll praise you endlessly for your goodness.

Amen.