Matthew 27:15 — Worth Ellis

The Reading from Matthew 27

A reading from Matthew chapter 27, the 27th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. We begin with verse 15. Matthew 27, verse 15. Now at that feast, the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner whom they desired.

And there had been a notable prisoner called Barabbas. Therefore, when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom are you that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus, who is called Christ.

For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man? For I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain were you that I release unto you?

They said, Barabbas. Pilate said unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called Christ? They all said unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

The Bible's Most Important Question

Even the casual reader of the word of God, if you read it regularly enough, you cannot possibly but help being attracted to a variety of questions, I should say, and very interesting and thought-provoking questions.

For example, in Job chapter 14, in verse 14, the Bible asks the question like this, If a man die, shall he live again? In Mark chapter 8, there's another question, What shall it profit a man that he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

In Hebrews 2 and verse 3 is that unanswerable question, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? These questions, I believe, are enough to make any person really give some serious thought as regards their relationship to an upcoming eternity.

But there is one question in the Bible that transcends all of these, and it's important, and I do believe perhaps it's the most important question in the entire Bible. It is the question asked by Pilate here to the multitude who preferred a robber to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And notice in verse 22, when they had chosen Barabbas, Pilate said to them, What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called the Christ? I would like to suggest to you that there are two reasons why I personally consider this to be the most important question in the entire Bible.

Number one, it concerns the most important person, not only in the Bible, but in the whole world. Jesus, the eternal, preexistent Son of God. In John chapter 1 and verse 1, we read that in the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God and the Word was God. In verse 14, the Word declares the Bible that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We veil its glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Yes, this one of whom Pilate asks the question, What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called the Christ? It is a question which you as an individual today should ask, What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called the Christ?

Because he is, without any argument, the eternal, preexistent Son of God. In Colossians 2 and verse 9, the Bible declares that in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. In Colossians 1 .15, he is declared to be the very image of the invisible God, the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe, as in John chapter 1 and in verse 3.

For your Bible says that all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. I'd like to read you a few verses. You needn't turn to them because I've got them already taken down.

In Colossians chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, For by him, speaking of the Lord Jesus, it says,. For all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and before him and for him.

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist, or the word is for less. That means not only did Jesus Christ make everything, and everything was made by him and for him, but he also holds all things together.

In Hebrews chapter 1, we read that he again is a brightness of God's glory, that is, the exact representation of God's being, and he upholds all things by the word of his power. And I love this statement.

It says of him that when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of a majesty on high. Jesus Christ, my beloved friends, is God in the body of human flesh. And when the Spirit of God, here, through this man Pilate, raised a description, he would have you ask yourself the same.

What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called Christ? For he is the preexistent, eternal son of the living God. He is the creator and the sustainer of the universe, the heir to this entire world and the purger of our sins.

In Romans chapter 1, he is declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. And upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ testifies to the fact that he was the son of God.

His resurrection also bearing evidence and testifying to God's acceptance of the sacrifice of Christ also declares that everyone shall be resurrected from the dead. Those who have received him to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, those who have rejected him to stand before the judgment of the great white throne.

The Personal and Eternal Decision About Christ

So first of all, this is the most important question you'll ever be called upon to answer, the most important decision you'll ever have to make, because it concerns the most important person in the world, and secondly, because it concerns the most important decision you'll ever be faced with, and that's mainly because there is no neutral ground.

It is an absolutely inescapable decision. There are other decisions you may well avoid, but this one you must confront. The Lord Jesus Christ said, he that is not for me is against me. And remember that it's not only the most important decision because it is an inescapable one, but because all other decisions you ever have made or ever will make in your lifetime have to do with things that last only for a brief period of time.

It may affect your health, it may affect your wealth, but this decision, my friend, will determine your eternity, whether you will spend it in hell or whether you will spend it in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every decision you ever made or ever have made, let me repeat, in this life, will affect you only as it relates to the temporal nature of your physical being. But this question here, and this decision, consequent or subsequent to this question here, is going to determine your eternal destiny, whether you shall spend it, save by the grace of God, conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ in the state of eternal bliss, with all saved sinners, or whether you shall spend it in the eternal abyss of the damned where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called the Christ? And may I remind you of this, my friend, that you ought to notice that it is a personal question. Now, I have seen some people that seem to have an unusual amount of concern about heathens who have no concern about themselves whatsoever.

Now, I can assure you this morning that if you die and go to hell, all your professed concern about heathens who have never heard the gospel will not for one moment alleviate your suffering in the lake of fire.

It is a personal question. It is not what will my neighbor do with Jesus Christ, it is not what that man or that woman will do with Jesus Christ, not what my husband or my wife will do with him, but it's a personal question, and I challenge you today to make it a personal one.

What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called the Christ? Now, that's my way of introduction, and now to the meat of our message, I would like to just, first of all, ask a question and answer from the word of God.

What God Did With the Lord Jesus

What did God do with him? Secondly, what did the Lord Jesus Christ do with himself? And thirdly, what sinners do with Jesus Christ in this world in which you and I are living today? Now, the first question to write is, what did God do with the Lord Jesus?

I don't know about you, but straightway that comes to my mind, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

God committed his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And what a joyous privilege it is to be able to stand before you this morning and tell you this, that God loves you, and that God expressed his love by giving the Lord Jesus Christ to die for the sins of the whole world.

We ought to remember the character of the love of God for this word, giving. I've noticed that there are two words, generally, although there are others, translated by the word give or giving or gave in the New Testament.

One of these means to heal or to give reluctantly as when one is forced to give in by a superior power. This is not the word used in John 3, 16. The other word is to offer, to give cheerfully and willingly.

Now, in the word of God, the Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver. Look that word up, you know what it means? God loves a hilarious giver. And, my friends, I say it very respectfully that God lovingly, willingly, cheerfully, gladly, and hilariously, in that sense, delighted to give Jesus Christ to die for the sins of the world.

And please, whatever you do, don't ever use the word simple around me when speaking about John 3, 16. You call it the gospel in a nutshell, and you say, how simple it is, for God so loved the world. But pause there and tell me what kind of world it was that God loved, and what kind of reception that such a world gave to his Son.

And then go on enabling me to understand how God could love the life of you and me at all, let alone enough to give his only begotten Son to suffer such a horrible, shameful death at the hands of a very wicked, a reprobate that he created and blessed with every good and perfect gift from above.

And then go on to tell me, my friend, how God could even give the likes of you and me an opportunity, what any kind of opportunity at all, to ever receive such a one as the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet I turn away from that, I look into the word of God, and I learn from the very twilight days of Revelation right throughout the entire book to the end of the twenty-second chapter of the book of the Revelation, that God is on the sinner's side.

And he is not willing to let any shit perish. And he has not complicated his thing called salvation. He predicates it only and simply and conclusively on faith in Jesus Christ. Believing that he died for you upon the cross and God raised him from the dead, the word of God declared he that believes on the Son has everlasting life, and he that believes not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. My friends, remember that believing on Jesus Christ is not a matter of mental gymnastics, it's the heart's acceptance of a person. And when the Bible says with the heart man believes on the righteousness, it is not the literal heart, but it's symbolic language in order to distinguish the real you from the outward shell of your personality.

We are by nature so degenerate and so perverse and such wonderful hypocrites, that just comes to us naturally, that you can smile at me or I'll do the same at you, and say one thing with my mouth and it means something entirely different in my heart.

And so God wants us to know that with the heart man believes on the righteousness, and it's not so much what I say, nor what you say with your mouth that saves you, but it's attitude of heart. It is total unconditional surrender to the authority of Jesus Christ over your life, accepting him as the Lord of your life with trust and faith alone in his death as payment for your sins.

This is the kind of salvation the Bible speaks of. Nor is this involved in the simple statement, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now God gave it, but secondly I read that God made him to be sin for us.

Christ Made Sin for Us

And I must confess that here I cannot penetrate the darkness of such depth of depravity as to think that God made Jesus Christ to be sin for us. Depravity on man's part. That demanded that whenever the Lord Jesus Christ became surety for our sins, and willingly became the sinner's substitute, it became incumbent upon the justice of God that he treat his son as if he were a common sinner.

And that's exactly what he did. In Psalms 22 you read, Strongholds of bastion encompass me round about, a gate that found me as a roaring lion. And then he goes on speaking prophetically, this is Christ in the 22nd Psalm, enumerating the treatment he received, the different kinds of degenerate perversity directed toward him, and poured out of time by law, guilty, Christ-rejecting, hell-deserving, reprobate that all of us were represented there at the cross.

And after men had done all that they could do to him, Jesus Christ upon the cross cried out, The vow, O Lord, hath brought me into the dust of death. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. Speaking of the Lord Jesus, he says, God, God made him to be sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

And I say again, I cannot penetrate, I cannot penetrate that veil. I mean, that's the reason that God pulled down the curtain of night, and darkness, stigmas, blackness, like that down in the land of Egypt that could be felt, enveloped the entire world, and God the Father, and God the Son, went up the hill called Calvary.

Abraham and Isaac Foreshadow Christ's Sacrifice

And fulfilling of that picture you'll find in Genesis 22, Abraham and Isaac, Isaac his only son, the one who fulfilled the promise must be made, and he was well over a hundred years old. Now, no change whatever that do for the children, he had as only one son, one child of faith, Isaac.

And God came to Abraham and said, Abraham, get you into a place that I shall show you, and take the lad with you in there. I want you to go up on a mountain and offer him up a sacrifice to me. He takes his son, he goes without question, he takes his servant, and along with that beast of burden they go, and they come to a mountain.

They pass from the end of the mountain, and the man says to the servant, you stay here, the lad and I shall go on in worship, and return again. And as the Father and the Son go up the mountain, in Genesis chapter 22, we read these words, they had the wood, they had the pot, but one thing was missing, they had no sacrifice.

They had a knife, and the young man was quite interested. He didn't know for sure what was going on, and he said to his father, Father, we have the wood, we have the pot, we have the knife, but where is the land?

And remember that Abraham said, Son, God will provide himself a land. And there upon that hill that day, he found his only son, in whom all the promises of God, which you cherish so much, were all wrapped up, and laid his obedient son upon the altar, and he drew back the knife, and he was about to find his son, and he brought up the sword of that knife, and to the bosom of his only son, in which his jacket would go over the post, although we read that he received them in the figure from the dead, apparently believing that God would raise them from the dead.

And with the knife poised and near there, we read that God says, Abraham! And he stopped, and he looked, and he saw a ram caught in a thicket by a pond. He took that ram and offered it to the Savior by him.

But now, there's another mountain. Hundreds of years have passed, and Abraham has said, God will provide himself a land. We see again a father and a son going up the mountain together, and this time their obedient son lays himself not upon an altar made of stone, but upon a stick, a post, a piece of wood, and permits the hands of Godly sinners to kneel and cry on a post, and to lift that post up between heaven and earth, and God, in those three hours of darkness, draws back the sword of divine judgment, and there's no ram caught in the thicket by a pond, and there's no one there but the Father and the Son.

And Jesus bears his lovely crucifix, and just like with his arms extended today, he says, Come unto me, all you that labor, and I have a link. And Lord of glory, willingly and lovingly and gladly received the sword of divine judgment that was caused to thrust the instruments of death.

Then it goes on to the Godly Son, and he says, Let them listen. The wages of sin is death. And I respectfully submit to you this suggestion, that the Lord Jesus Christ, as a result of the suffering that the hands of men may have hung upon the cross for too forever, but never to be a God until he came in contact with sin, because the wages of sin is death.

It was sin that killed Jesus Christ. May I be a beloved friend today without Christ. May I bring it right down to where you're sitting. It was your sin that killed the Lord Jesus. It was your sin that necessitated the murder of God's Son.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. There's only one general reason given in the word of God for which Jesus died. It was for sin. It was for the sins of the whole world, but it was for your sins individually, and it was for my personal sins for which the Lord Jesus Christ died.

And we read that God, in those three elements of darkness, made him to be sin for us. He who knew no sin. And again, I cannot take it in. And how often he who tries to preach the gospel just scrambles his brain like his precious egg and meditates by the hour.

Lord, give me an illustration. Here I have before me this morning a group of people. How can I, a poor preacher of Adam's race, a preacher of slaves with my limitations, how can I explain to you what it was like for a man to hang in the cross for three hours of darkness who had never told a lie, who had never had an evil thought and endured murder, who had never, never, ever known what it was to say a word he had to take back, who was skinless and a humanist.

Now, we can't even say thanks. But to imagine what it was like for him who had never had sin upon his inner body, knew no sin, did no sin, and in the worst no sin, and God made him to be sin. Do you understand what that means?

Well, if you do, explain it to me. To think that all of the filth and putrefaction, the unadulterated corruption of our proletariat was poured out upon the heart and soul of such a man as three hours of darkness.

Isn't anyone who cried out, I speak in deep my word, there is no sin? Isn't anyone who cried out, I stick fire into my bones, all my bones are out of joint. There was a lonely son of God suffering upon the cross for us, too.

So wish you time, and we're looking for illustrations. My mind goes immediately way out to the northwest in front of our country, and I've always wanted to take a picture all over Washington. I live in Northern California, and I wanted to find me one piece of virgin timber where a man had never set foot.

And I'd like to sit sometime and just dream about such an experience as could ever be my loss in the divine providence of God. To find a piece of ground where a man had never set his accursed foot and had destroyed the beauty of it, I can picture those statues of trees reaching up two, three, maybe even four hundred feet into the heavens, and I can see them with their roots going down in the ground and drinking the water, the food of God's earth, with those tombs of Francis' time reached to heaven.

Yes, to thank God for the good and perfect. Yes. I can see the animals in perfect freedom, and man has never yet found a place as far as he's ever with a conscience of greed. There's such a beautiful picture of tranquility, of a sense of quietness, and I visualize what it would be like that I'm sitting, thinking, and along finally comes man whose curses, perversions, distorts, everything he puts into praise, hangs upon because he's born in sin.

And his thoughts, his thinking, his intellect, his will, his passion, and everything else is subject to this awful curse of sin and depravity. And in a moment of carelessness, he stops and he makes tents, and in carelessness, he leaves his tent fire unquenched.

He goes on his way, and his thoughts come from death and spread, and it goes roaring, and I can see the flames and the smoke going up to heaven, and those giant trees burn and falling over hour after hour after hour, and finally get the fire put out.

And when it gets cold, I take a walk through my imaginary paradise, and I find it nothing but a remaining mass of blackened stars, stumps, and trees that have been hatched, burned down, and animals burnt to death for the ground is black and fierce, and that's what I think of the faultless soul of Jesus Christ after the hellfire of God was pulled out of cottage in three hours of darkness by some exquisite and loveless flower that is so fragile and beautiful that the human breath would cause it to wilt and die.

When God, by sending three hours of darkness, when Jesus Christ opened his bosom and upon his skin his soul, God gathered up every lie he ever told, every evil, wicked, filthy thought, and betrayed action of the committed, and pulled them out.

And so, listen, the way that the way that the way of the faultless soul of Jesus Christ. That's a very faint illustration of what it meant for Jesus Christ to be made sinless. Yes, God gave him, but God made him to be sin.

Christ Forsaken in Darkness

And then I read something else, that God forsook him. God forsook him. You've never been forsaken. I wonder, my friend, if you've ever tried to imagine what it would be like to be left entirely alone somewhere without a single human companion.

And I'll tell you this, and you listen carefully, that if you die and go to hell, the Bible teaches you, you may well stand eternally in perjury confinement. Not only are you there like a fowler that's weeping and waiting to match your feet, and the worms that have died and the fire that's not quenched, whether there's a good change in the light of the scriptures, you'll be absolutely alone and out of touch.

Not one human being to communicate with. Not for a week, not a month, not a year to interrogate the Simon, but for eternity. And those three hours of darkness, the Lord Jesus cried out, My God, my God, who art, I have forsaken thee.

David the psalmist could say, I have been young and old, and now I am old. Yet ever have I seen the righteous forsaken. In my travels, sometimes preaching, I get in late and I'm tired, and I'm a very poor sleeper now.

And I go into a perfectly strange home with a host of hostesses, so kind, and full of fabulous preachers, and they're preaching away in the back room, they're drunk. And there I lay down, and I'm so completely exhausted, I turn the lights out, and I wake up about four o 'clock in the morning, wide awake, and it's pitch dark, and it's a brief disorientation.

I can't even remember which way the door was and the window was. And there I lie, in absolute darkness and blackness and no sense of direction. This must be something. Would it like to be perfect? My friend, let me tell you that God loves you, and God gave Jesus Christ to die to save you from hell.

And God made it a new sin so you wouldn't have to pay for your sin, and God forsook him so that you wouldn't have to be forsaken forever in hell. God forsook him. To be alone? Well, my friend, this must be something of what he had in his mind when he died out upon the cross from the 69th song.

Again, speaking prophetically, I think in deep fire where there's no standing, I'm coming to deep water where the floods overflow me. And again, in verse 10, he says, it's broken my heart, and I'm full of heaviness, and I look for some to take pity that there was none in far comfort and I've found none.

There's a verse in the song that goes like this, I love to hear songs so well. I think it was Helen McAuliffe, I first heard her sing it. She announced, Mr. Keller, as a matter of fact, alone? Yes, all alone the Savior died for me.

Alone? Yes, all alone he paid sin's penalty. Alone? Yes, all alone from sin he set me free. Without a hope, this world was sunk in sin and shame until the Savior came to do the Father's will. And he did it alone.

He did it alone. Oh, what love. Oh, what love. I hear the prophet says he was wounded for my transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities. The tax-cashman of my people, the Father with his stripes, I am healed.

And when I think of the character of the verse in it, the author of the generous toll of mine. And when I think of you today, my friend, as an unsaved man or woman and the opportunities you've had to be saved and the love that God has expressed for you in the giving of his Son.

He gave him, he made him, he first took sin and then all alone upon the cross. Oh, my friend. I say, was it for me the Savior died? Was it for me he left his home of God? And I turn to the word of God and it says, Yes, it was for me.

It was all for me that Jesus died upon the tree. Oh, love of God, how rich, how free. It was for me. It was for me. Now, if you don't mind, I'll just take a second to undress and think on that. It was for me.

All for me that Jesus died upon the tree. I like that. I like that. I really like that. He died for me. Now, you see, that brings us to the second question. What can you do with himself? Never forget, my dear friends, that Jesus Christ did not have to die.

Christ's Willing Self-Sacrifice

Apart from the fulfilling of the scriptures, remember this, that the Lord Jesus Christ was never under any obligation to die upon the cross, other than with love for you and me, dictated and devoted to the will of his Father.

He had no sin to be told. He was not forced to die. He was God in the body of human flesh. He had a right to make a choice, and he did make the choice. And Paul puts it in these words in Galatians 2, 20, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. The life that I now live in the body of his flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. And in Galatians 1, 4, we read again, speaking of him who gave himself for us.

In John 10, 17 -18, Jesus said, Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down in myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.

This commandment have I received of my Father. And my friend, I want you to know that the Lord Jesus Christ did not have to die for you. He chose to do it. That's why you have to choose him to be saved.

He didn't have to die for you. And my friend, I want to tell you who care of sinners that sit here Sunday after Sunday listening to this message of God redeeming grace and having eternal life and peace and a home in heaven offered to you, that if you reject God's salvation as John wrote or held this book, the Bible, it teaches God is not vindictive.

God is loving. God does not desire that any should perish. But this word still teaches that if you reject Jesus Christ, God will be glorified in your damnation if he could not be in your time. Because in the coming day every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father where there are fiends in heaven on the earth and on the earth every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess.

Now, when we get saved by the grace of God, how do we glorify God? We bow our knees to God the Father. We confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Is that not to come through the feast and worship for an exception and sanction?

We get but to bow the knees in the presence of God and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Is it not to the glory of God the Father through the epitome of the holy God who wake you up? Well, there are some of you poor sinners who have been coming around with a bread for heart, and I hope you won't say it.

Weeks and months and years you know your Lord. And remember He didn't come in and said you don't worship him. And you're yet to be saved, and I'm telling you my friend, the Bible says now is a day of salvation before now is a such a time.

And you better be careful. Listen, In our early subject, what do sinners do with the Lord Jesus, well now there are some that are great, great, great, bold, and a little bit yellow, like I used to be before I was saved.

How Sinners Respond to Jesus Christ

Loud mouth, vocalist, black-skinned person, rejecting Jesus Christ, God, heaven, hell, and everybody else but me. I say, I don't love him! Away with him! I want nothing to do with this Jesus Christ. That's exactly what the people did in our reading.

Away with this man, well I'll have this man to reign over us. Then you see my friend that I saw, who would not dare reject him, but they politely neglected him. Like Felix, the Roman governor, who came in to be saved some day, you read in Acts 24, 25, that as Paul reasoned with him of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.

You don't get saved trembling, you get fear of Christ, of Jesus Christ. It says he trembled, and he answered, Paul, go thy way right now, and I'll have a more convenient season, I'll talk to you, and I'll hear some more about this gospel.

Do you ever even think of asking the whole word of God about this man? No. And some reject him, yes, oh, some of us are very brave, but oh, the hell with Jesus Christ. That's their attitude. That's the honest.

I'm not trying to be sweet-tasting. That's their attitude. Well, no, I'd love your people like to do that, because you're going your way, running your own business. Jesus Christ is not in all your faults, your life, your business, your home, or nothing else.

And then again, there are some who sell the Lord Jesus Christ, like Judas Iscariot, but I'll tell you, when I compare Judas to some sinners I've met, Judas is a gentleman, a wise businessman, at least he's got 30 feet of silver, but I've met sinners who sell the Lord Jesus Christ because they're afraid they're going to get a little persecution after they get saved.

I've met sinners who sell Jesus Christ for a wine bottle. I've met sinners who sell Jesus Christ because he wants to wait until her husband gets saved before she gets saved. And I've met sinners who sell Jesus Christ because he wants to wait until his wife gets saved, and then he'll get saved.

You'd be surprised at the things people sell the Lord Jesus for. But thank God, I read in John 1, 12, that many have received him, for them he gave the right to become a church, and I can rejoice because here and there, while some reject him and some neglect him and others sell him, thank God, some accept him.

Here and there you'll find a poor, weary, sin-burdened soul that'll quit all this ignorant nonsense of putting out being saved and get out in the business and do it. The only thing about us poor servants is that we're always aiming to do something.