Good morning. It’s good to be with you as always. Good to be in the Word.

We’ve been in Matthew’s Gospel for almost three years now.

We’ve paused from time to time, but largely that’s all we’ve been doing the last three years is just slowly walking through Matthew’s Gospel. And you could walk through, I think, any book of the Bible

endlessly and endlessly discover, not different truths, but see the same truth deeper in a new light. And that’s just the Bible. It’s just supernatural that way. It’s just like a diamond and it’s beautiful and you turn it and you see that same diamond beautiful from another angle and you keep seeing all these angles and you keep staring and staring and staring at all these different angles. But with that said, this morning is going to be the last sermon that I want to preach to you from Matthew’s Gospel.

I’ve preached Matthew 28, the Great Commission, to us multiple times. And I guarantee you I’ll preach the Great Commission to us many, many more times. But I feel that we have covered the breadth of what we need to cover in Matthew’s Gospel in times when we’ve skipped over passages. It’s because… I’ve kind of addressed that in other passages. So I don’t feel we’re missing out. I don’t think you can cut short what you paid, alright? You’re getting your money’s worth still. But I just feel at peace about preaching to you from 27 this morning and seeing one more thing here. And then I believe the Lord has other things for us in other places. So I hope you’ve enjoyed being in Matthew’s Gospel. I think it’s lost probably on us. And we talk about this a lot, just how quick culture moves, how quick we move. And we’ve forgotten how to just sit and just be somewhere with the Lord. And I think that’s true in Bible study. It’s like, what’s the next best thing? What’s the next best thing? And I hope you’ve grown in your love and appreciate Him just sitting in a book of the Bible, sitting in a Scripture. And I hope you would say, Kingdom of Heaven. That’s that thing that, man, we’ve been saturated in. We’ve been saturated in for two and a half years is the Kingdom of Heaven. And Matthew just drilling that deep down into our souls. And that’s what Jesus has come to bring to us, the Kingdom of Heaven. I want to preach to you this morning, Matthew 27, verse 15-25. If you want to turn there.

Matthew says, Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted.

And they had then a notorious prisoner. A prisoner called Barabbas.

So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered Him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I’ve suffered much because of him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd, to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said, Barabbas. And Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Jesus, who is called Messiah, or Christ? They all said, Let Him be crucified.

And he said, Why? What evil has He done? But they shouted all the more, Let Him be crucified.

When you hear the word scandal, I think our minds immediately race to politics. We immediately think about someone doing things behind closed doors. That’s wrong. That’s dishonest. Decisions that were made. For superficial reasons. And it’s either straight out illegal. It’s unethical. It’s immoral. And it’s to the hurt of a lot of people. That’s what a scandal is. It affects people in a significant way. We think about that as we think about past presidents or different events in government in modern history. You may think about celebrities and things that have gone on. You know, marriage and affairs and things. It’s a scandal. It’s a scandal. It’s scandalous. Everyone goes, Oh, this thing has happened. Scandals hurt people. It’s what they are. They hurt someone or someones. There’s this one scandal in all of human history, though, that’s to the help of all people, not to the hurt. There’s this one scandal that as wrong as it was in its intention, as wrong, as broken, wicked, perverted as it was by the ones who did it, this scandal is for the good of all. And it’s the scandal of the cross. And that’s what I want to preach to you about this morning. The scandal of Jesus’ cross.

And it says the governor, he was accustomed to release one prisoner for Israel or Judea, as they would have been called at that time. Now, remember this because we’ve talked about this before. Remember, Israel at this time was a slave state. So in other words, they were self-governing insofar as Rome said, you can self-govern, but you’re still going to pay tribute to us and we’re over top of you. So they were not autonomous.

And the governor, who was Pontius Pilate over Judea at the time on behalf of Rome, apparently, we read, he would, out of some strange act of sympathy, what, maybe stay in some favor with them as much as they hated Rome. Hey, I don’t know. I’ll release to you a prisoner.

And Pilate puts up before them Barabbas. And now Barabbas is not just a bad guy. He’s not just a bad dude. He’s not a petty thief. You know, he didn’t write some phony checks. Barabbas was a notorious, notorious criminal. He was infamous. You know, he… Everybody knew the name Barabbas. He was a well-known criminal. We learned that he was a robber. He was a murderer. He was a part of some rebellion and insurrection among the Jews. So I want you to see what Pilate’s doing here. What Pilate’s doing is incredibly strategic. It’s very tactical. Pilate knew Jesus had done nothing to deserve punishment. Pilate knew this Jesus, has been superficially charged out of their envy. They hate Him. That’s why. And he knows, secondly, this isn’t some normal situation because my wife has communicated to me that she calls Him righteous man. This innocent man, He shouldn’t be messed with by us. I’ve had this very intense, disturbing dream. We can only imagine God had done this to all the more illuminate, clarify. This is… This is Jesus who has not done the thing they’ve purported He’s done. So Pilate’s not said, well, okay, here’s this criminal and here’s Jesus. That’s not what he’s doing. He’s going, hey, here’s Barabbas. You know Barabbas who murders people and he’s a robber and he causes insurrection and rebellion. Here’s this really, really, really, really bad dude who’s obviously guilty. Here’s this criminal. Oh, and here’s Jesus. You know, Jesus who… Just a week ago, y’all were calling Him your Messiah. You said Hosanna and y’all were throwing your coats down. You were throwing palm branches down. Oh, He’s the Son of David, you said. Do you want Barabbas, this horrible, notorious, obviously guilty, got to go free? Or Jesus who’s obviously innocent and doesn’t deserve this?

They say, we see your polarizing choice.

Barabbas. Barabbas. Barabbas. Barabbas. He says, what do you want? They say it louder. Give us Barabbas. We want the man of the flesh, not the man of the Spirit.

We want, as one person has said, the man of violence, not the man of peace. And it’s plain, isn’t it, who is ruling their soul, who the king and kingdom is at work in their hearts and their souls. And it’s not Jesus the Messiah. He says, well, what am I supposed to do with Jesus? We’ll just put Him in prison for a few months. Just, you know, exile Him. No, no, we want Jesus, who we really don’t know why we’re doing this. We have no real reason. We want you to do the thing that you should do with somebody who is as guilty and as evil and as wicked as they can be and as dirty under the law. We want you to crucify. We want you to crucify Him. We want you to crucify Jesus, who is obviously an innocent man. That’s what they want. That’s what they want. I want to say to you this morning, the scandal of the cross involves the execution of an innocent man. And really not just an innocent man. I think we can say the execution of Jesus is the execution of the innocent man. Has there been anyone in all the history since Adam up till now who’s been an innocent party like Jesus? Always clean, always moral, always upright in heart, mind, and soul, always pleasing to God? Jesus was the law keeper, not the religious leaders, not the people who are crucifying Him. Jesus was white as snow as it concerns sin. Jesus had no record of it. Yet what does Isaiah tell us? He went silent. He went silent like a lamb. He went silent like a lamb that sheared and slaughtered. He didn’t open His mouth.

In the place of light offenders? No. In the place of pretty guilty people? No. He went in the place of the worst offender. Barabbas? Yes, Barabbas, but please understand, He went in the place of you. He went in the place of me. Jesus went because you and I have infamously, notoriously broken God’s law.

Jesus died for those not only who have broken God’s law, He died for those who put Him on the cross in the first place. We’re all enemies of the cross until the power of the cross gets a hold of our hearts and helps us see it right. The psalmist says, why do they rage against you? They rage against you and your anointed. Yet it is the ones who rage against God that God has in His grace. That grace and mercy has saved. Are you used to the gospel? Have you heard it so many times? You want a new episode? You want something fancy? You want something better? Friends, we can’t get over the gospel. We can’t begin to fathom the gospel. The innocent for the most guilty, the Son of God for the enemies of God. And then I think we have to constantly grapple with this and wrestle with this and just sit until we’re just in tears on the floor that it wasn’t only that it happened, it was that God the Father and Jesus together determined it would happen that way. The King of Heaven chose to be a bloody, naked, shamed man on a piece of wood. Isaiah says in 53,

By oppression and judgment He was taken away and asked for His generation who considered He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people, and they made His grave with the wicked and with the rich man in His death. Although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him. He has put Him to grief.

Jesus and the Father have chosen this. Jesus chose to be betrayed. He chose. He chose to be made a mockery. He chose to carry your sin. He chose to be wrongfully accused. He did this for you. And I think the only thing we can say is why would Jesus do that? Why would Jesus do that?

I think Paul clearly says why He did it. It was to deal with our sin. Galatians tells us that Jesus became the curse for us. Jesus carried the curse of the law all the way to the grave. All that the law would condemn us for. The law says curse is everyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus did that so you and I could go free. So we could have life with God, peace with God. That’s why He did it. But then you have to ask the next question. Why would He do that for us? Why would He do that?

I don’t know. You know what I think? The only thing we can do is sing. We can sing the line to that song, How Great the Father’s Love. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom. So you can’t understand it, but here’s what we can do. We can worship because of it. We can marvel at grace. We can marvel at a God who loves to love, who loves to forgive. That’s what we can do. So you know what that means? That means if your worship is weak, that means if we show up in here and you’re mumbling words and you’re thinking about what you’re going to eat for lunch later and you’re thinking about yesterday and what’s going on at work and you can’t sing out loud, your worship’s weak is because your love, your encounters with the Gospel have become weak. And if we’re slow to obey and we’re slow to pray and we’re slow to share the Gospel, it’s because our Gospel encounters have become so small and silly and we need to get back to the place of being wowed by God. By this Gospel.

There’s no greater truth. There’s no greater power than this Gospel.

You know the worst thing you can do is assume it.

People who aren’t thankful, as David talked about. You know what people are who aren’t thankful? They’re entitled.

They assume.

Don’t assume the Gospel. Don’t assume the Gospel. Don’t assume the Gospel’s wrath. Assume you’re entitled to the wages of your sin. That’s what you can assume. Worship. Because you’ve been shown grace and mercy and forgiveness. That’s the Gospel. And don’t think whether you’ve been a Christian for five months, six months, or you’ve been a Christian for six years, ten years, sixty years, that there’s something better. Well, the Gospel, and it’s good, but I want to move on to deeper. I want to move on to deeper and better truths. I want the heavyweight spirituality. Friends, there’s no heavyweight spirituality over the Gospel. The Gospel is the thing that continually refines us and makes us new. Tell me, what is ecclesiology? That being the study of the church without the Gospel. Could we, a bunch of sinners, organize and live together and love one another and forgive one another and put up with one another if the Gospel of Jesus didn’t forgive all our sins that we commit against one another? Could we have an ecclesiology without the Gospel? No. Well, what is eschatology? The study of end times. Friend, I don’t want to arrive at the end time without the Gospel because I’m in big trouble. The Gospel’s my only hope that the end times are going to be a good time for me.

What is the study of hermardiology? The study of sin. I don’t want to study sin if I don’t have the Gospel in my place pleading for me the blood of Christ. What even is Christology? The study of Christ if it’s not true that Christ got up on a cross for me. That would be to study my worst nightmare. I would be studying my judge, but as it is, I’m studying my Savior and my friend because He did bleed and die for me.

Friends, if we’re bored with the Gospel, I’m afraid we haven’t got the Gospel.

What humiliation. What a scandal it is that Christ, the most innocent, would be found guilty for the most wicked of us. And that’s all of us.

But I want you to see this. I want you to see this. Jesus,

through the intentions of the scribes and the Pharisees, He redeemed man. Through their hate, it was God’s plan to love. But at the same time, I want you to see this. It was Satan’s great plan. To see Jesus crucified.

Through the cross, the very thing by which evil thought it had a victory was the very means by which Christ had a victory over sin and over death and over the ancient enemy of God, Satan. Look at what Paul says in Colossians 2.13. And you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. God made a lot together with Him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with His legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers in authority. And what did Jesus do? While Jesus is naked, while Jesus is mocked, while Jesus is bloodied and bruised, while Jesus is carrying the sins of the world, what actually is happening?

He put Satan to open shame. He put every evil force and every demon and every spiritual principle and every principality that pays homage to Satan, all evil, that was put to open shame. That was triumphed over by His cross.

You can’t make it up. You can’t make it up.

Friends, this is an amazing gospel. It’s an amazing gospel. The Hebrew writer says to us, let us not neglect so great a salvation. Let us not neglect so great a salvation.

You know, I’ve got my red truck. And I remember I’d just gotten that truck when I came to Providence about two and a half, three years ago. Oh man, I love that thing. And if anything touched it, I was so upset. You know, and just nothing can touch it. And it’s amazing now, three and a half years, three years later, you know, it’s got a little rust spot there and I’ve banged it on this and I’ve hit that. And it’s like, I should really get this done. I should get around to fixing that. You know, it’s going to rust and make a bigger hole. And I see it again. You know, I should get around to fixing that. I should get around to fixing that. You know, it’s amazing how we do that with things we get. We think we value them and it turns out we don’t love them and cherish them as much as we thought we did. Friends, can I say to you this morning, the gospel is not to be neglected. The gospel is not to rust over. The gospel is to be cherished and cherished and cherished. And when sin and the world and Satan want to rust it over, and make it a smaller thing in your heart and life, you’ve got to go back to the gospel and just cherish it and cherish it and cherish it and just polish it and polish it and just live in the light of its beauty.

I want to say to you this morning, if you feel guilty, you feel covered over in shame, you feel lost to God, I want to say to you, if you feel like you’re a notorious sinner, Christ, He is a famous Savior.

I want to say to you in your worst situation, sin, Jesus is the most victorious victor, Savior, Redeemer, who could ever live and be for you. He lives to make intercession for you. He loves you and His cross is powerful for you. I want to ask you when you’re moved to guilt and shame and you have this sin you keep struggling with, I want to ask you, are you looking to the cross? Are you looking to the cross to see the power of Jesus over your sin? Because you know what’s really hard to do? It’s really hard to keep sinning and looking at Jesus at the same time. I know we wrestle with what are called besetting sins, but we’re that much more in advantage or disadvantage depending on how much we’re fighting to gaze at Jesus and bask in the wonder of the gospel of Jesus. Are you exposing yourself all the more to the beauty of Christ? Because when you do that, you know what sin’s going to become? It’s going to become weightless and worthless to us.

Maybe our sin problem is a gospel problem. Of course it is. Friends, the gospel’s not good news for you when you find out what Jesus did. It’s good news for you every day. It’s good news for you in every fight. Preach the gospel to yourself. Cherish, love the gospel.

Matthew goes on in verse 24.

It says, So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man’s blood. See to it yourselves. And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children. Then he released, He released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

Up to this point, it seems like Pilate’s Jesus’ ally because Pilate’s the only one speaking good sense. In fact, he is speaking good sense. He says, hey, Jesus has done nothing wrong. John’s gospel makes it clear that Pilate knew that full well.

But then it says, when Pilate saw he was gaining nothing, he wasn’t making a headway. He wasn’t appeasing everyone. Here’s what Pilate does. Pilate stops thinking about truth and justice. And Pilate starts thinking about Pilate.

Pilate has a position to think about after all. Does he not? I mean, he’s the governor over Judea. And if Rome finds out that he’s not doing a good job of keeping law and order, I mean, Pilate could lose his job if not lose his life. I mean, he’s got to think of himself, doesn’t he?

Pilate, as much as he knows the truth, he’s not willing to stand for the truth. As much as he knows what’s right, he’s not willing to stand with Jesus. And he does the cowardly thing. He washes his hands as if that does anything. And says, it’s not my problem, it’s your problem. I’m not guilty of this, you’re guilty of this. It’s not true. It’s not true. That’s a meaningless gesture. His passivity makes him just as guilty of the crucifixion of Christ as those who actively hated him. His indifference to stand back and say nothing was just as bad as if he had said everything and stood with them.

And they say, well, hey, that’s fine. Let his blood be on us and on our children. That’s not true. I want to say it to you again, and we’ve got to hear this over and over again throughout our lives. It’s only the blood of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus, His perfect life, His death, His resurrection. It’s His unique work alone that saves us. And we’ve got to preach that to ourselves and we’ve got to preach that to the world. But I want to say to you, if that is true, and it is true, if we receive such a great salvation, if we receive freedom from the penalty of God’s just judgment, if we’ve received power over our sinful nature, if we are no longer of the kingdom of man, but we’re of the spiritual kingdom of heaven, as Matthew has so vigorously been talking to us about in all these 28 chapters, if it’s so, you and I will stand with Jesus. We will identify with Jesus. You and I will suffer with Jesus if it’s so. Paul says in Colossians 1,

he says, Now I’ll rejoice in my suffering for yourself, and in my flesh I’m filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is the church. Now surely Paul doesn’t mean Jesus’ suffering wasn’t enough to say. That’s not at all what he means. But Paul’s getting at here what we’re talking about. Friends, if you and I see what Jesus did for us, you and I will do that thing that disciples do and we will identify with the cross of Christ. We will pick up. We will pick up the cross and we will carry it. We will say, No, I’m with Jesus. I’m in fellowship with Him. He is my master. If you’re calling Him silly, call me silly. If you’re calling the gospel foolishness, call me a fool. Identify with Jesus. That’s what it means. And I want to point out to you one more time, I’ve done it multiple times throughout Matthew’s gospel, but that crowd disciple motif.

See, the crowd here is doing what? What? They’re standing off from afar and they’re marveling at Jesus’ miracles. They’re marveling at Jesus’ words.

But hey, now they’re standing afar off and they’re marveling at Jesus’ crucifixion.

They got a thrill and a rush from what Jesus could give them in the glory days. And hey, now it’s fitting to marvel at Him and watch Him be crucified. In other words, the crowd’s not really committed to Jesus. Are they? They’re committed to what they can get from Jesus. That’s all of it. You say, well, aren’t they religious people? Oh yeah, they’re religious people. But understand, friends, cold dead religion can do nothing to weaken the hate of the flesh for the Spirit. It was the religious leaders themselves who instigated the crucifixion of Christ.

So I want to ask you, are you just infatuated with Jesus? Because you know what you may find given the right stimulant, given the right environment, when it’s convenient, your infatuation will quickly turn to contempt. You will be crying, Hosanna! And the next moment, crucify Him.

Jesus stood alone.

Jesus stood alone. And that’s part of the scandal of the cross. He was all alone. All alone standing for truth. No one to be found with Him.

But He calls you and I as His disciples in the power of His resurrection life to follow Him.

To identify with Him.

To give up our preferences and our comforts and our securities. To give up our very lives. That’s what a disciple is. It’s one that says, my life, my way, my days are gone and I’m living for the life and the way of my Master. That is Christian discipleship. Jesus says to each and every one of us this morning, get out of the crowd and be my disciple. Identify with me. Fellowship with me. Jesus bids we would come and die that we would live. That we would live. And you know, I can’t preach fidelity to Christ enough. If it’s not because your own sinful flesh wars against the Gospel, wars against Christ in you every day, if not because the enemy wars against Christ in you every day, it is overwhelmingly true more and more that you and I do live in a crowd that’s increasingly hostile. We live in a time that’s increasingly hostile to the Gospel. And not apostate. And that they’re leaving the church. We’re living in an extremely sick time when people are leaving the church. People are trying to remake the Gospel on the inside of the walls of the church. Recast the picture of Jesus that looks nothing like our Jesus from the inside out.

The Gospel, and I want to remind us of this, the Gospel’s offensive.

The flesh doesn’t want to hear the Gospel. And when you start trying to make the Gospel less offensive, well, you’ve taken the Gospel away and you’re preaching to the world simply what they want to hear. Do we love the world? Yes, Jesus loved the world, but you can’t love the world if you can’t speak the truth of the Gospel to the world. Friends, are you willing to identify with Jesus’ offensive Gospel? And I think if we’re not willing to do that, we’re not thinking long and hard enough about the crown of thorns pressed onto His head. The cat-of-nine-tails ripping flesh off His back. We’re not thinking about His nail-pierced hands. We’re not staring long and hard enough at His agonies. He was crucified because His life, His truth, His Gospel, it was offensive. It was offensive. It was of the Kingdom of God. Do you take your discipleship serious? Is it too light a thing for you? Do you? One person has described it, it’s a matter of proximity. Proximity. You know, you ever go camping and it’s kind of cold. You can see the stars so good because it’s so pitch black. And you’re around a campfire and it’s the only light or heat there is. Maybe it starts to die down and you need to go get some sticks. And what happens is you get further away from the fire, you get further away from its warmth, and you get further away from the light. It’s only in your proximity to the fire that you can both see and feel the power of it.

Is Christianity just useful for now? Is it a helpful tool for helping you to think about your life and just deal with your problems and just fill some religious need you think you have? Friends, let it not be so. Let’s live in close proximity to the full, full gospel message because as offensive as that gospel is, when it’s in its heat, when it shines its light, it’s powerful to save. It’s the only thing that will save and do the work of heaven is the gospel unadulterated, the gospel raw, the gospel pure. Will you be that kind of Christian in your home? Will you be that kind of Christian in your workplace? Will we be that kind of church in our culture that we will stand with Jesus on Calvary? We will preach an unadulterated gospel no matter what.

And will we proclaim it? Will we proclaim it?

It’s only through the scandal of the cross church that we’re saved.

Jesus the innocent, He was executed for you and for me notoriously. Sinners. Jesus, He stood all alone while you and I stand way off. And it’s only because He did that thing that you and I can be saved. It’s only because He did that thing that you and I are made new. The Apostle Peter says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds, you have been healed.

Friends, if that’s your Jesus who did that unique work,

won’t you stand with Him? Won’t you follow Him? Won’t you suffer with Him? Won’t you preach Him? Won’t you find your life in Him and in Him alone? Because in Jesus and His unique work in the scandal of the cross, you and I are saved. That’s the only message for you. That’s the only message for your children. That’s the only message for everyone. Everywhere is this beautiful, wonderful, scandalous gospel of Jesus.