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What do you live for? What gives your life meaning? What comforts you?
However you responded to those questions, whatever answer you gave...are you happy with it? Do you think what makes you happy now will continue to make you happy in a year, two years, ten years?
What if I told you I could offer you something better?
You might be saying, "Oh great, some flimsy spiritual answer." But give me a chance, hear me out.
Oppression
The Jewish people were once enslaved by the Egyptian government. They were given poor living conditions and forced to work for almost no pay or food. They are the ones that the Egyptian higher ups would take advantage of to build their buildings and any other manual labor they didn't feel like doing. This went on for some 400 years.
The Jewish people cried out to their God, Yahweh, to deliver them from slavery and Yahweh subdued the Egyptian government through various plagues and miracles and caused the Egyptians to rid themselves of the Jews rather than face the wrath of Yahweh. Part of this deliverance involved killing a lamb and smearing its blood around your doorpost. God spoke to their political leader Moses saying that the angel of death would pass over those homes which had the blood on their doorposts and not kill the first born of that family.
Now this isn't a fable or myth, if you watched a History channel documentary on the Jewish people this is literally their history and the way the story is still told today.
To remember this deliverance from oppression the Jewish people celebrate once a year a feast called Passover. It is to remember that Yahweh delivered them from slavery to the Egyptian government and brought them through the desert into land that was promised to them.
This text picks up at the time of Passover. The Jewish people of Jesus' time were ruled by the Roman Empire. Rome had control over the Jewish nation and allowed the Jews freedom to regulate themselves as long as it didn’t oppose Caesar or get out of hand. However, the Romans were seen as superior to the Jewish people. For instance, at any time a roman soldier could ask any Jew to carry his pack and belongings for one mile….the Jew by law was required to comply or face penalties.
The Jewish people were tired of being second class citizens and longed for some way out. They longed for someone to deliver them from their problems.
A Choice Between Saviors
There was a tradition each Passover that the Roman government would release one prisoner.
The options this Passover were:
*Barabbas - a Jewish man who was involved in a revolt against the Roman government and in the process had committed murder.
*Jesus of Nazareth - A Jew from Galilee who had developed a following by preaching about the coming Kingdom of God and who had performed many miracles and healings.
Now to give you a little background...
The Jewish people believed in a Messiah, a man chosen by God, who would come and rise up as a military and political power to overthrow the Roman government. There had been many people that claimed to be the Messiah and had gathered together a following to attack the government, but ultimately they were killed and their followers disbanded.
This happened time and time again.
Now here are two men, Jesus who is claiming to be the Messiah and claims that the Kingdom of God is not only coming, but is now here...and there's Barabbas a man who not only talks the talk but walks the walk as he has already been involved in an attempt to overthrow the Roman government and will likely try again and learn from his mistakes.
The Jews want to once again be released from oppression and here are two men with very different methods trying to do just that.
The crowd is given a choice, "which prisoner will you choose?"
The crowd shouted, "Barabbas!"
A Practical Savior
We all feel under oppression in some way. We all look at something in our life and can see that it’s just not right.
“I shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
Once we identify the oppression, then we look for a savior.
What are you feeling oppressed by?
Maybe it’s a dead-end job. Maybe it’s being single. Maybe it’s your family, or your marriage, or your home, or being poor, or not having enough friends.....whatever it is we all look to something in our life this way.
Then we set our sights on a savior.
If I could just work for a different company, if I just found someone to love me, if I could just move away from my family, if I could just get out of this marriage, if I could just get a bigger home, if I could just make more money, if I could just be more popular……then I’d be happy, then I’d be free from this oppression.
But what happens? Think about the past, now that you see this pattern…look through your experiences in the past. When you get your savior, does it really make you happy?
False saviors may satisfy for certain situations, but they never address our underlying needs. So history just repeats itself time and time again.
You get a glimpse of this in our text. Barabbas was trying to overthrow the Roman government but it didn’t work because Rome’s military power is vastly superior to a rag-tag group of political rebels…..but what if he had one more shot, then maybe he would succeed!
When our false saviors don’t cut it, we often think, “If I could just have more, then maybe that would fix the problem.”
Do you see how fruitless this is? It didn’t work before, but maybe more of it will.
We do this with money, sex, social status, possessions…you name it.
What I have isn’t good enough, but more would make me happy.
These are all functional, false saviors, they promise eternal happiness but they can only provide temporary pleasure.
How to choose the Better Savior
The name Barabbas means Son of the Father. Isn’t it ironic that Jesus is the true Son of the Father? The Jewish people saw both men offering solutions to their oppression, but they chose the false savior over the real Savior.
When push comes to shove, we don’t choose Jesus either. When life wounds us we cling to vacations, our bank account, our education, our relationships, etc to save us and comfort us but I want to show you how to choose a better Savior, the True Savior.
The reason we cling to these practical saviors is because at bottom we don’t believe in Jesus as Savior. Whatever you’re struggling with, the reason you are unhappy and unsatisfied is at bottom a belief problem. Imagine that you are in a Nazi concentration camp as a Jew….the situation is horrendous…but what if you knew that today was that last day before you were liberated? You may still be abused, atrocities will still happen, the evil is still just as real….but because of your knowledge of imminent liberation you aren’t affected like someone who doesn’t know of the liberation, someone without hope. The internal belief changes you.
Whatever your heart runs to when it's been wounded, it's settling for a bootlegged, grainy movie in a foreign language when it could have a surround sound movie theater experience. The problem isn’t in our desire to be rescued; the problem is that we fill that desire with lesser saviors. C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Jesus is the only Savior that can still provide, even when your bank account can’t. He will still be there when your other relationships let you down. That job won't always be there to give you identity, but Jesus’ work on the cross will be there to give you identity.
In the text we see Barabbas and Jesus. Barabbas really is guilty for murder and rebellion against the Roman government, but Jesus is innocent. Pilate found no guilt in Him and neither did King Herod. Jesus is the one that receives the punishment so that Barabbas (the guilty) can walk free. This is a foretaste of what was to be accomplished on a cosmic scale on the cross. The guilty can be set free because the truly innocent has taken the punishment.
How do you know that Jesus will satisfy? How do you know He’ll come through? How do you know He’ll hold up His end of the deal? Because he’s already accomplished the most difficult part, all the problems you’re dealing with are a piece of cake compared to what He’s already been through to save you.
He lost the only relationship that really matters, His relationship with God the Father so that you could gain it. He left His heavenly family so that you join it by being adopted into it. He left all the riches He had in heaven so that you could gain the only riches that matter in this world. He left the fame, popularity and acceptance of heaven so that you could gain the only acceptance that is of any value.
Don't you see? Because Jesus came down and suffered oppression for you, you can be freed from the only oppression that really matters. Because of Jesus coming down, living a perfect life, suffering the cross and rising from the dead, you can be free from enslavement to sin and death.
Instead of being disappointed by practical saviors, turn to the real Savior that loves you and has already paid the highest price possible to save you.
Romans 8:32 (NLT) - 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?
For Barabbas the price was paid, he was set free. Our trying to earn salvation or acceptance from God is like a child trying to buy a yacht with his weekly allowance. Barabbas wasn't set free because of his good behavior. The price was paid while he was in all probability an enemy of Jesus. He was set free because of Jesus and what Jesus chose to do.
It's only when you see that Jesus paid the price for you that you can step out of the endless cycle of false saviors. Why settle for dumpster diving when you can walk inside and eat at the buffet for free?!
It's only when you see that Jesus has already given you the most valuable possession in a relationship with the Father and eternal life that you can be freed from running to false, practical saviors that will in the end leave you worse off than you were before.
This text takes place during the Passover, a time when the Jewish people remembered how God had delivered them from slavery years ago. It was during this Passover that the true lamb of God came down and by His blood set His people free not only from slavery to Egypt, but from slavery to sin and death.
Jesus fulfilled the true meaning of the Passover by becoming our Passover lamb. Because of Him, we too have been set free.
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