Matthew 27:21-28
The chapter from which these verses are taken records the details of the blessed Lord’s trial before Pilate. Who was this Pilate? First, he was the Roman governor of Judea, said to be a man that exercised excessive cruelty during all the time of his administration; this seems to be borne out by Luke 13:1. Next, this Pilate was a man who had no special or peculiar animosity to the blessed Lord; on the contrary, he had a very distinct sense of his innocence, and sought to give effect to it by releasing Him. According to Pilate’s wife, the Lord Jesus was “that just man”; according to Pilate himself, Jesus was not only “this just person,” but was declared to be One in whom no fault was found. But Pilate had a large stake in the world of his day, and besides he was Caesar’s friend; if he could have secured the one and maintained the other, he would have let the blessed One free; but, failing this, he casts in his lot with the rejecters and murderers of Jesus. What a picture of many a one in the present day! Friends, is it a picture of you? It is impossible to take sides with Christ and the world. “No man can serve two masters.” Which is your master, Christ or the world?
The three solemn questions which he puts to the Jews respecting Jesus, are:
1. “Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you?”
2. “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?”
3. “What evil hath he done?”
Now with respect to the first question, it may be well to state that it was, we believe, a custom among the Jews at the time of the passover to have a prisoner set free, in token or commemoration of the great deliverance which Jehovah had wrought for them. Pilate, knowing this, seized the opportunity as a door of escape for himself in his miserable dilemma. Alas! what is man not capable of? But if his question exposes himself, and the agonies of a conscience in its unrest, it also fully manifests the state of Israel and that of all men morally. It brought out into the full blaze of light man’s choice. Mark it well, the Jews have set before them the murderer Barabbas, and the spotless, holy Jesus; Barabbas means son of Abba! Was the devil mocking them with the name? This man was the display of satanic power in a twofold way: first, as a murderer (see John 8:44), and next as a rebel against the very authority that Pilate was appointed to vindicate and uphold. The Jews loved Barabbas as they hated Jesus. They choose Barnabas—“Not this man but Barnabas.” Here, then, is the solemn representation of the world’s choice: a rejected Savior tests all men. Men and brethren, suffer me to appeal to you as to where you stand with respect to this solemn test. What is Christ to you? Have you bowed in your sins and misery and owned Him as your Savior and your Lord? Have you found in the blood of His cross a discharge from all the guilt of your sins, and the condemnation you are exposed to in consequence? Have you seen, further, in that blood, His blood, your peace with God, made once and for ever? Be assured that pardon and peace are both to be found there, and only there. He is the peace, He made the peace; He preached peace. Men and brethren, have you got it?
Further, this question of Pilate, which manifested the condition of Israel, sets forth, as it were, in type the moral state of man—man’s choice of sin and Satan, rather than good and Christ. Deeply solemn is the fact that man, as such, has no heart for God, he prefers his lust, his vanity, his pleasure even, to the Christ of God. “When we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men.” “Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas.” These are the prophetic and historic declarations of God as to this fact, that the one thing that is strong in the world, and in man’s heart, is enmity against Christ.
Further, observe, friends, how this choice was “their will” (Luke 23:35). Oh what words! Sinner, in your sins and nature, guilty and away from God this night, behold here the picture of yourself, your will against Christ, your choice made, anything or any one but Him. Hearken, I beseech of you, to the words of the Lord Jesus in respect of all this, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, He says to the women who followed Him with bewailing and lamentation, the fruit merely of natural feeling excited by affecting circumstances: “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.” Deeply solemn words! And why weep? Because days of weeping were coming, when it should be said to the mountains, “Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us!” Oh think of this! “Where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” How truly has it been said, that man rejects the green tree, and God rejects the dry!
For Israel then life was there in very truth, in the Person of Jesus the Son of God, and they refused it, and are given up in consequence; but now all is found, and only found, in a dead and risen Christ. Oh, may God give you to weigh and ponder these momentous realities in his presence; as I once more put the question to your conscience, What is your choice?
Second question. Having made their choice, Pilate again inquires of them with respect to the One whom they had rejected: “What shall I do with Jesus, which is called Christ?” It suggests to the mind the thought of the blessed One being, as it were, in the way. How can He be got rid of? How disposed of? Hearken to their cry: “Let him be crucified!” They thus constitute themselves the “murderers” of the “Just One”; and when the actual moment had arrived, He was nailed to the cross by wicked hands. The cross is thus the expression of the world’s united hatred of the Christ of God. “The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against Jehovah, and against his Christ.” All classes and conditions of men were represented in this: the debauched and bloody Herod; the cunning, world-loving Pilate; the idolatrous Gentiles; the religious people of Israel. Men and brethren, you and I were represented there, we have a nature and hearts of like stuff with those who nailed the Savior on the tree; in that motley confederacy, we can easily see ourselves; the same blood is ours, the same wicked hearts and hands, the same alienation and enmity and pride; and, in that awful cry which man howled out in the hatred of all that was and because it was good, “Crucify him, crucify him,” our voices joined. How solemn to reflect on this, ponder it well, oh sinner! you that still and now reject and refuse God’s great salvation. Think, oh think, of that day that is coming, when God will demand of the world, What have you done with my Son? If you die in your sins, unsaved, what answer will you give to that question? If the Lord Jesus comes for His own, and you are left behind, what will you do, where shall you appear?
But observe this, beloved friends, that whilst man with wicked hands nailed the Savior to the cross; we can, through grace, announce to you the blessed news, that there, too, we, through faith, can see nailed by God every demand and claim that was “against us”—that was “contrary to us” (Col. 2:14); there, too, the whole array of principalities and powers was spoiled, a show made of them openly, the blessed One triumphing over them; there, too, faith can see the end of man judicially before God: verily, it would be impossible to overrate the magnitude of the cross, looked at from either the divine or human side.
Now we come to Pilate’s third question: namely, “What evil hath he done?” Oh think of all the value of this monosyllable “He”! The brightness of the Father’s glory and the expression of His substance! It is of Him, in the blessedness of His Person, in the grace and goodness of all His ways, that all scripture testifies; His name runs like a golden thread throughout the divine record: we may, by faith, hear the whisper of that name in Eden; see, by faith, its revelation in promise, and its type in sacrifice; hear again the harp of prophecy, as it sweetly wafts along the ages the preciousness of that name! Men and brethren, what think ye of Christ? How do you meet the challenge of the Roman governor? How did the men of that day meet it? Why, with more clamorous demands, with louder voice, “they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified!” And Pilate, conscience-blunted, worldly-minded, unrighteous Pilate, in the presence of the tumult of those who hated Jesus for His goodness, delivered to be crucified Him whom he there and then confessed to be “this just person.” Be assured of it, the test of every one and everything is Christ. The solemn word of “all the people,” the terrible, awful words, “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” made them guilty of the blood of Jesus; and they are to this day the abiding witnesses of their sin and hatred of Him who was nothing but goodness.
Then the soldiers, in derision, and with all that brutal violence which became them as heathens, and common, heartless executioners, do that which shall be rendered to Him in glory by the Gentiles in praise and worship—and Jesus, patient, spotless One, goes through it all in meek submission, bears it all in perfect obedience to His Father. He felt it all, while enduring it all; but there was a far deeper and a more terrible anguish than all the malice of God-hating men. It is characteristic of the Gospel of Matthew to bring out into the foreground the dishonor heaped upon the Lord, as well as the insults offered to Him; while Mark gives prominence to the forsaking of God. It is this last none can fathom, as another has most tenderly and blessedly expressed it: “His heart, His soul—the vessel of a divine love—could alone go deeper than the bottom of that abyss which sin had opened for man, to bring up those who lay there, after He had endured its pain in His own soul. A heart that had been ever faithful was forsaken of God. Where sin had brought man, love brought the Lord; but with a nature and an apprehension in which there was no distance, no separation, so that it should be felt in all its fullness. No one but He who was in that place could fathom or feel it. It is too wonderful a spectacle to see the one righteous man in the world declare at the end of His life He was forsaken of God. But thus it was He glorified Him as none else could have done it, and where none but He could have done it—made sin, in the presence of God as such, with no veil to hide, no mercy to cover or bear it with . . . ‘a worm and no man’ before the eyes of men, He had to bear the forsaking of the God in whom He trusted.”
Oh friends, men and brethren, what think ye of this? Here is solid resting ground for sinners, guilty and lost. Here, where hatred against love in God was manifested, the perfect love of God, doing for him that hated both God and Christ that which condemned the hatred, and blotted out for ever the sin which was the expression of it. Here, where every attribute of God was vindicated and upheld, the soul believing finds peace and rest.
Let me entreat of you this night to look to Jesus, Jesus who was crucified, who is risen and glorified, and having in His Person, as a Man in heaven, the marks He received in His body on the tree; in whose once marred visage now shines all the glory of God. The united voice of all time says, Look to Jesus! Earth, with its sins and sorrows, says, Look to Jesus! The ever-opening grave says, Look to Jesus! Hell, with its miseries, and heaven, with its glories, both say, Look to Jesus! He is coming—coming quickly! Soon His voice of mercy shall be heard no more. Oh! then, to-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts; hear His voice now in all its blessedness and in all its love, sounding it may be for the last time in your ears—“Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and none else.” But if you still refuse and still reject, I warn you a time may be at hand when, in the solitary hour of death, no human voice shall be heard, this proffered grace of God in His preached gospel will be revived in your memory and sound in your soul with the terrible, awful conviction—Too late! Too late!