Oct 12
27
Release Barabbas
“…and so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them and delivered Jesus, when He had scourged Him, to be crucified…..And they that were crucified with Him reviled Him.” (Mark 15: 15-32)
As I knew that this was to be my text recently, it was as though I did not really want to read, study or preach the passage. I found it difficult to sleep after I first read this section in Mark’s gospel.
I’m not sure but I suppose all of God’s children find it hard to read such an account concerning the one who loved us and gave so much for the redemption of our very souls. I was uneasy as I made my way along the path that led up to Golgotha. I seemed to be as one who looked upon the sufferings of my Saviour and just stood by and watched it all again and again. I would do nothing this night just as I would do nothing every time I have read this passage many years ago and many years to come!
Perhaps it was the truth, that weighty truth, that this JUST and INNOCENT one was tormented so because of THIS unjust and guilty one, this vile sinner, this coward who would stand by and allow such inhumanity against THIS Man! And yet, I am crushed again and again by the full and free voluntary act of Grace He gives to me, to us, to view such crimes and judgment He underwent for such miserable worms like us.
Oh, the king being uncrowned so we may be kings and priest’s unto our God! Stripped naked so we may be clothed in His everlasting righteousness, mocked so we would never hear such words against us in glory, fulfilling the ancient texts because we could never do so and then enduring the final and high handed insult…”Save thyself and come down from the cross”.
He will not save Himself because He had a flock to keep, a fold to protect, and a church to rescue. He will ‘damn’ Himself (being made a curse for us) so we would be heaven bound. I cannot go on…. He did it all for the likes of you and me.
Praise the Son, these sleepless nights will one day give way to full rest and a better understanding of this thing we call substitution! – Drew Dietz.
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Consider Jesus– as Afflicted-Octavius Winslow
“He was afflicted.” –Isa. 53:7
For this Jesus was born. His mission to our world involved it. In the righteous arrangement of God, sin and suffering, even as holiness and happiness, are one and inseparable. He came to destroy the works of the devil; and sin, being Satan’s master-work, Jesus could only destroy it as He Himself suffered, just as He could only ‘abolish death’ as He Himself died. He was truly “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” In the gospel according to Isaiah–the fifty-third chapter of which might have been written by a historian recording the event of the Savior’s sufferings after it had transpired, rather than by a prophet predicting it seven hundred years before it took place–the circumstances of our Lord’s afflictive life are portrayed with a fidelity of narration and vividness of description which can only find their explanation in “the Spirit of Christ, which was in him, testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.”
“He was afflicted.” What touching and expressive words are these! Consider them carefully, my soul. Attempt, if it be possible, an analysis of your Lord’s afflictions. And the first feature that presents itself is, that He was afflicted BY GOD. How clearly is this fact put–“We did esteem Him smitten by God and afflicted. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief.” Was Jesus, then, afflicted of God? So are we! The God that smote Him, smites us; the paternal hand that mingled His cup, prepares ours. O my soul! refer all your trials to God. Be not tossed about amid the troubled waves of second causes, but trace all your afflictions, however dark, bitter, and painful, directly to the wisdom, righteousness, and love of your Father in heaven. “Himself has done it.” Enough, Lord, if I but see Your hand and Your heart guiding, shaping, and controlling the whole.
Jesus was afflicted BY MAN. “He was despised and rejected by men.” Beloved, how many of our trials, and how much of our wounding, springs from the same source! This should teach us to cease from man, and to put no confidence in the arm of flesh, since ofttimes the staff we thought so pleasant, and on which we leaned so confidingly, is the first to pierce the hand that too fondly and too closely pressed it.
Jesus was afflicted IN THE SOUL. “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death.” Is not soul-sorrow our greatest, even as the soul is the most spiritual, precious, and immortal part of our nature? Is your soul-sorrowful? Are you conflicting with sin, harassed by doubts, depressed with fears, sorrowful almost unto death?–consider Jesus as having passed through a like soul-discipline, and uplift your prayer to Him–“My heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.”
Jesus was BODILY afflicted. We do not read of actual disease of body, but we do read of bodily suffering such as infinitely surpasses all to which we can possibly be subjected; and endured, be it remembered, O my soul! for YOU! This may be the Lord’s affliction in your case. A diseased body, distressing nervousness, extreme debility your daily cross. Be it so–it is all the fruit of everlasting and eternal love. Receive it believingly, endure it patiently, and be anxious only that the rod thus laid upon you by a Father’s hand should bloom and blossom with holy fruit to the glory of God.
Affliction was a SCHOOL for Jesus. “He LEARNED obedience by the things which He suffered.” Not less is it ours. We enter it, for the most part, with but a mere notional, theoretical acquaintance with God, and with Christ, and with our own selves; but sorrow’s hallowed discipline transforms us into experimental Christians, and, gazing upon the lowly Savior, we exclaim–“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” O my soul! if this be the result of affliction, let the scythe mow you, the furnace dissolve you, the flail thrash you, the sieve sift you; it will but conform you the more closely to your once afflicted, suffering Lord.
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My Substitute
Christ Jesus, in His human body, took what I deserve (God’s Wrath) so that He might give me what I don’t deserve (God’s Righteousness). God made His Son to be sin for me. In other words God the Father punished His own Holy Son as if He had actually committed all the sins that I am guilty of (past, present, and future). And not only my sins, but the sins of His elect were laid on Him. He who is guiltless was a Substitute for the guilty- Me! He who is Just became a Substitute for the unjust-Me! And as my Substitute, He paid the price in full for all my sins. I am justified (innocent) by the precious blood of Jesus. He, Christ my Savior, BY HIMSELF, purged my sins. THEY’RE GONE! GONE! GONE! Never to be remembered against me anymore. As one of God’s elect, one of His blood-bought children, no charges can be laid to my account. – Gene Harmon
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THE INCARNATE SAVIOR
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—
“Taking the very nature of a servant.” Philippians 2:7
“The Word became flesh, and made His dwelling (lit. tented) among us.” Yes, He, the true Heavenly Palm (if it be allowable for a moment to mix the metaphor) Himself came down amid the wilderness grove; He, the Pilgrim of pilgrims, in infinite condescension and love, pitched His tent in the midst of the human encampment! How comforting and consoling, our Divine Redeemer thus identifying Himself with our tried, tempted, woe-worn humanity! Moreover, that in stooping to assume our nature, He selected not the exalted condition, but linked Himself rather with poverty and distress and dependence, in order that the poorest and the humblest, the most wretched and forlorn, might catch balm-words of comfort from His lips—the lips of Him who often had nowhere to lay His head.
Let us think of that lowly nature of His, thus embracing in its scope every class and every phase of being, even those who had until now been neglected and disowned. Rome was accustomed to deify the manly virtues exclusively—strength, courage, heroic endurance. Greece wreathed her crowns around the brows of her intellectual heroes—her poets and philosophers, her sculptors and painters. But the weak, the ignorant, the oppressed, had none to vindicate their cause until He came, who pronounced “Blessed”—not the great, or rich, or powerful, or learned—but the meek, the mourner, the poor in spirit, the persecuted, him who had no helper! Hence, groups composed of every diversity of character tracked His footsteps and hailed in Him a friend.
Stern, strong men like Peter; intellectual, thoughtful men like Thomas; loving and meditative men like John. Penitence crept unabashed to His feet, and bathed them confidingly with tears. Sorrow came with sobbing heart and speechless emotion to be comforted. The poor came with their tale of long-endured misery. Infancy came stretching out its tiny arm, and smiled delighted in His embrace. While He rejoiced with those who rejoiced, He wept with those who wept. The fainting multitudes moved Him to compassion; the one petitioner in the crowd who touched His garment-hem, arrested His steps and drew forth His mercy. Every weary, wandering bird, with drooping wing, seemed to come and perch on the thick branches of this gracious Palm of Elim—this mighty Cedar of God. Beautifully has it been said: “In His heart Mercy may be said to have held her court: Holiness could dispense with an Ark and Tables to hold her laws; for in His life its enshrined glory was made so transparent, that even demons confessed Him to be the Holy One of God.”
Believer, you who perhaps may be fainting under life’s burden and heat, come and once again take refuge in the contemplation of the perfect Manhood of the adorable Son of God! Delight often to think of Him as a partaker of your nature. Though He has been well described, “as the One only true and perfect flower which has ever unfolded itself out of the root and stalk of humanity,” yet it was a real—a true humanity. It is because they come welling from the depths of a human heart—because their music vibrates on a human lip—that the words are so unspeakably tender, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Those who are thus buffeting the storm, exposed to the windy blast of the desert, battling with care, harassed with anxiety, prostrated with bereavement, stricken with conscious guilt, longing for safe rest and deliverance from earth’s sins and sorrows—can understand the deep meaning of the central words in the importunate prayer of blind Bartimeus at the gate of Jericho—”Jesus, Son of David (Elder Brother), have mercy on me!” It will be from glorified human lips, too, the welcome will at last be given—”Come, you who are blessed by My Father, take your inheritance, the Kingdom!”
“His the descent from everlasting bliss,
In manger born, to raise us up on high;
A woe-worn Pilgrim in earth’s wilderness,
Wedding our finite dust with Deity.
“Around His path no blazoned banners wave,
No jeweled diadem His brows adorned,
His cradle borrowed, and a borrowed grave,
Servant of servants, poor, despised, and scorned.
“Thus was He more than Brother unto all,
The poor, the lost, the burdened, the oppressed;
Not one excluded from the gracious call,
‘Come unto Me, ye weary, and have rest!’
“Peace for the guilty, stung with conscious sin,
Peace for bereaved ones, wailing for their dead,
Peace amid waves without and storms within,
The troubled soothed, the mourner comforted.”
“For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest.”