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REDEEMING REGRET "The Story of Barabbas" - April 2, 2017 - Sr. Pastor Scott Christenson

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so as you hurt today we're going to conclude our sermon series called redeeming gret we've been looking over the last few weeks of Lent at the various characters of the passion story and some of the very regrettable things that they do today we're going to look at the story of Barabbas and I want to start out today by pointing out something very important about this 3 something that you may not have realized about it up at something that I believe it's crucial to understanding it and that's this avarice occurs in all four Gospels  in other words the story Barabbas is recorded in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John  that may not sound all that strange to you at first but actually if you know the gospels well you know that is actually an exceedingly rare thing  if acted shocking to look at the list of things that are not recorded in all four of the Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke but John says nothing about it  Jesus most famous sermon Now The Sermon on the Mount occurs in gospels Matthew Mark and John don't have it at all the famous level The Prodigal Son and the raising of Lazarus from the dead and Jesus comments about whatever you did to the least of these you did to me each one of those one of the four Gospels  so you have to ask if so  who sings why is this story included in all four  because if you really think about it it doesn't really seem all that does it I mean what if you read the passion story without forever's you'd still have all the essential Parts wouldn't you what apparently not for some reason the gospel writers all of them found the story of the Barabbas to be so important essential fit every one of them believe the passion story of Jesus doesn't that just make you wonder why why to Robinson touched on it last week the story of Barabbas was in his sermon text last week and if you were here are you may remember he mentioned the name Barabbas means here it is bars the Hebrew word for son and Abba perhaps already is the Hebrew word for so far August literally means son of the father  and this is interesting right house of course the other guy standing next to him Jesus we know it's also the son of the father he's the only begotten son of the heavenly father it's so what you have here in the story actually is two sons of the father one son of the father who is guilty and one son of the father who is innocent  a course the way this should work is that the innocent son of the father should set free and the guilty son of the father should be punished  but this story goes exactly the opposite of the way it should go in the story the guilty son of the father gets set free and the innocent son of the father gets crucified  the core switch Happening Here is that this is a picture of all of us  we're supposed to read this and identify Whisper app  Solutions 3 verse 26 says this for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God true faith  We're All Sons of the father and like the Raptors we're guilty and deserve  Richmond from God but Jesus At The Cross had taken all the punishment that we deserved on himself and put all of his in a on us and that's the gospel right  so maybe that's why the Barabbas story is included in all four because it's not just a picture of what happened that day it's a powerful picture of the Gospel of Jesus and what God has done for all of us through Jesus Maybe  but the more I think about it the more I think there more to it than that it's not like the gospels would have no gospel without the story mean the Parada story is hardly the only place in the gospels where the gospel message is being demonstrate so damn I'm forced to ask why is the story so important to the gospel writer why is it so important that they all want to include this when we  tell me other very important things out some in order to answer that question I need to give you a little background first  because sometimes we have to do that right like like if I were to show you this picture and asked you why are these people so happy  no one answer would be because they just won the World Series right that would be technically true but to really understand this picture and the extreme Jubilation happening here you have to know some facts it's not just that they won the World Series it's that this team just won the World Series for the first time in a hundred 8th all yours  I want to know about that sound you really don't understand what's happening here in this picture will you find out the story of Barabbas is kind of like that  there's some background Happening Here did you need to know before you can really understand what this story is teaching you and why it's so vitally important  and the back you have to know is the background of the gospels themselves did you think about how did the gospels actually to watch  resistance fall out of the sky one day right they didn't even start out as part of the Bible all of individual books of the Bible including the gospels were each written independently and circulated separately and hand copied for a long long time before they were finally collected together into one book that we know of today as the Bible and that means among other things that no one has the original Bible  what we have is Thousands ancient manuscripts and little fragments of manuscript like this one and because there are so many of these what's the word hand copied over so many years inevitably errors got introduced into some of them and so we have in the ancient manuscript of the gospels what we call variant reading which simply means that manuscript has a verse one way and another has it slightly different  smell this sounds really bad at first right you have to realize that none of these variant readings affect our doctrines or our beliefs at all  m in many medications we are able to figure out which reading is correct and which one is in error and all of this is critical background for under standing the story of Barabbas because there is a very very interesting variant reading in the story  and it's in the verse where Pilot says to the crowd this which one do you want me to release to you lavish or Jesus who is called Christ  thought you may not know this but there are actually several ancient manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew that render this verse like this which one do you want me to release to you Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ smell think about it one of two thing has happened here with these a Greek manuscript right and someone Spartan later  or his name really was Jesus Barabbas and someone took the Jesus part out later it's hard to imagine why someone would have wanted to put the Jesus part into his name not hard at all to imagine why someone might want might have wanted to take the Jesus part out of his name because after Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven the name Jesus which it once been a very common name suddenly became sacred name that every Christian held in great reverence and we still do today  and it's not at all hard to imagine that someone in the early church might have found it very distasteful name as our precious Lord and savior now we can never know for sure most likely scenario is that this guy's name really was Jesus Barabbas and that the question the gospel writers are trying to share with his story was actually a much deeper question than it appears to be at first glance when pilate asked the question what he meant was which of these two guys do you want me to release to you put the deeper question that the gospel writers were using this story to raise with the church was really dissed which kind of Jesus do you on  this Jesus or that be  and what's the difference well Jesus Barabbas we know as an insurrectionist  in other words as someone once said he wanted to defeat Roma power using Roman memes he was trying to be the people Savior by force I'd he wanted to bring about a new kingdom also but he wanted to accomplish it right now even if it meant killing people with Jesus Barabbas the ends justify the means  put the other Jesus and meat and slow and patient in the way he was bringing his kingdom about he was the Savior who when he was about to be arrested told his own men to put their swords away and not even fight and it's very few see if you're on his side to get very frustrated with the Jesus like that because sometimes many times it just seems like nothing is happening and the truth is we all struggle with this questions to this very day  all of us who are Christian want to bring about the kingdom of God  we want as we pray in the Lord's prayer for his will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven and yet so often we look around us and we know his will isn't and the way of Jesus Christ is for us to live out our faith in the midst of this messed had to share his truth and Grace one conversation one life at a time  and that sounds good at first but after awhile you realize that is such a where to bring the kingdom until the constant Temptation that we all face is to try and take this matter in your own hands and speed things up a little bit a great example of this in the not-so-distant past a group called the Moral Majority remember the memorial majority some of you if you're my age or older you probably do the Moral Majority the group that was formed in the 1980s to mobilize conservative Christians as a political force in America and their goals were to elect candidates and passed laws that would enforce Christian values in American society Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson were two of the key leaders in that movement and 20 years after its they wrote A Memoir about their experience here it is called Blinded By might turn on the if your bulletin for today I've shared with you and amazing phone from this little book I'd like you to turn and look at it now  let's look at it together what station  you said if any political movement should have been able to change the country by implementing its agenda was the Moral Majority  we have the nation's attention we were mobilizing the nation's largest demographic unit and we had a Lighthouse friendly to our objectives for 6 years we also had a republican-controlled senate our people were welcome Lighthouse which saw the visiting other than on  we were advancing liberalism was retreating it was just a matter time before our nation would be restored to what we wanted it to be that was 20 years ago today very little that we shut out to do has gotten done in fact the moral landscape of America has become worse two decades after conservative Christians charged into the political Arena bringing new voters and millions of dollars with them in hopes of Trance tell me the culture through political power it must now be acknowledged that we have failed we failed not because we wrong about our critique of culture or because we lack conviction or because there were not enough of us or because too many were lethargic and uncommitted we because we were unable to redirect a nation from the top down  real change must come from the bottom off  or better yet from the inside out that's a powerful and what a great reminder to all of us  Jesus Christ the son of the father has not only shave by taking our place he has invited us into his mission to transform the world but we can never what seat is not a transformation that can ever be enacted the Barabbas way  it's not a transformation that can have fight force  passing laws and electing candidates that enforced Christian values may make us appear more but it doesn't actually change anybody you can put anyone on the Supreme Court you could even overturn Roe versus Wade that doesn't make a single person change their mind about the inherent value human life  you cannot log a marriage and all 50 states but doing that won't make a single person who is far stop suddenly value what the Bible says about marriage or sexuality or anything else please don't misunderstand Stan me before you all start reading your emails to me I'm not suggesting that Christians should withdraw from the political process entirely I certainly don't want to dismiss the good work of Christians who hold public office  I'm simply trying demonstrate to you when I believe Matthew is desperately trying to teach here  and it's something that we also quickly  and that's not the way of Jesus Barabbas never really works maybe tells for a while but never long-term because the kingdom of Jesus Christ comes from the inside out not from the top down it comes one heart at a time when sinful son of the father realizes that the innocent son of the father took the punishment that they deserve so that they could be free it is not the fast way to do what is the only way that show my friends Pilots question is no less relevant today  then it was two today God asks it of all of us which Jesus Jesus Barabbas for Jesus who is called Christ let's bow our heads and pray

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REDEEMING REGRET "The Story of Barabbas" - April 2, 2017 - Sr. Pastor Scott Christenson

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