Well, please turn with me in your Bibles, if you have one with you, to the 27th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, and we will read from verse 11 to verse 44. The theme of this Bible conference, you will notice, is the road to Calvary. And we need to remember that that road began not when the Savior of the world was conceived in the womb of the Virgin. It began in the councils of eternity, when the second person of the Godhead, God the Son Himself, pledged Himself to be the Redeemer of God's elect. He pledged himself in what theologians call the covenant of redemption, when Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together in their triunity, out of their own good pleasure, decreed and determined to save a people who would be to their praise through the ages of eternity, and uniquely be to the praise of God the Son. because the great ultimate purpose of God in creation and in redemption is to glorify His Son. We are God's subordinate purpose. Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, is God's ultimate purpose. We are proximate in the eternal plan of God. but Jesus is ultimate in the eternal plan of God. We've been looking at the gospel of Matthew and doing little more than seeking to walk through the passion narratives. It's remarkable that upwards of a third of Matthew's gospel is devoted to the last week of the Savior's life prior to His death on Calvary's cross, and what we see in Matthew is replicated in Mark and in Luke, and perhaps most dramatically of all in John, where almost half of his gospel is devoted to those last days leading up to the cross. And of course, simply the proportionality of the gospels in the way they relate to us and unfold for us the earthly life of the Son of God. The proportionality itself is impressing upon us the theological significance of those final days. Here is where we cast our eternal anchor. And so, Matthew 27, and we read in the 11th verse. Now, Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus said, you have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate said to him, do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave him no answer. not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed. 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 called Barabbas. In Luke's gospel, he's called an insurrectionist. a rebel who had sought to undermine and possibly overthrow the Roman governing authorities. He was 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 have 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. Pilate said to them, then what shall I do with Jesus who is called 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. 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 for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him, and they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, put a reed in his right hand, and kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, hail, king of the Jews, and they spit on him. and took the reed and struck him in the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over His head, they put the charge against Him, which reads, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests and the scribes and elders mocked Him, saying, He saved others? He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel? Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God? Let God deliver Him now, if He desires Him. For He said, I am the Son of God, and the robbers who were crucified with Him also reviled Him in the same way. Let us pray together. Our God and Father, as we ponder together the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth of Your love, as we reflect together on the passion of our Savior, Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask that the Holy Spirit Himself will grant us understanding and insight. We pray that Your Word, Lord, Your living Word, would touch the very wellsprings of our being that Your truth will not lie dormant on the surface of our lives, but will capture the very citadel of our hearts and bring us in wholehearted devotion to You. Meet with us in our need, Lord. Bless us as we wait upon You, and we ask it in our Savior Jesus Christ's name. Amen. I'm sure like me you have noticed that the Gospels, the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are a remarkable mixture of the natural and the supernatural, a remarkable mixture of the deeply human and the profoundly divine. And you find that throughout the whole Bible. Indeed, when you read the Bible, the human, the intensely human and the ordinary and the natural seem to be everywhere on the surface. But actually, what's happening is that God's revelation to us has come to us like a theological iceberg. You know when you see an iceberg, you see but the top of the iceberg, probably one-seventh to one-eighth of the iceberg is seen, and the vast body of the iceberg is unseen beneath the waters. And this is what's happening throughout the whole of Scripture and perhaps most profoundly of all in the passion narratives that unfold for us, the road to Calvary for our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything seems so human, so ordinary. Everything seems natural. Jesus is being caught in a vortex of animosities and plots, and he seems unable to extricate himself from the enemies who have long plotted his demise and who are now beginning to circle around him, waiting to pounce and secure his demise. But actually what we are intended to understand is that beneath the seen, there is the unseen. Beneath the natural, there is the supernatural. Beneath the intensely human, there is the profoundly divine. because everything that we read is happening according to the foreknowledge of God and to His predestinating will and purpose. Remember how Peter in the day of Pentecost put it so dramatically, whom you crucified according to the predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge of God. And that's why in the Christian life we need every day to be praying that God would give us the eyes to see, to see beyond the seen to the unseen, to see beyond the human to the superhuman, not to judge the Lord by feeble sense, but to trust Him for His grace, for behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. He truly does move in a mysterious way, as William Kuprashym puts it. And he does hide himself so wondrously that at times we're constrained almost within our own believing hearts to say, Lord, where art thou? But behind all the seen and the human and the natural, there is the predetermined counsel, will, purpose, and wisdom of Almighty God. And we see that throughout this narrative as Matthew unfolds for us the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see Jesus being passed from enemy to enemy. We saw yesterday that he was arraigned before the religious authorities, and he was accused of blasphemy, speaking evil of God. But the religious authorities have no power to punish anyone with death, and so he's handed over to the civil authorities. And the charge moves from blasphemy, which Pilate, the Roman governor, would have little interest in, to sedition. that we don't have time to unpack all of that. But even as these wicked religious leaders move the goalposts, knowing that the charge of blasphemy will cut no ice with Pilate, they move the goalposts and accuse Jesus of sedition, of being an insurrectionist, of saying he is a king, another king. And in the ancient world, there was but one king. Caesar was Lord. There was a three-word statement that dominated the landscape of the Roman Empire, Caesar ipsa dixit, Caesar has spoken. But now Jesus is being accused of elevating himself, calling himself a king. And he's been accused of sedition and insurrection. And I think Calvin rightly and wisely and profoundly sees in all the machinations of the religious and civil authorities, God placarding the two great charges that he has against humanity. Those two charges that were first leveled against Adam in the garden, the charge of blasphemy, because while they did not so much speak evil of God, they thought evil of God. And then they rebelled in insurrection against God. And the two charges that hang over the head of every human being who has ever been born of woman in this world, blasphemy and insurrection and sedition and rebellion against Almighty God, these are the two charges that find themselves leveled against the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you read the narratives, if you didn't know any better, you would almost think that Jesus was being swept along by events, passed from one enemy to another. But in all that is happening, God is working out His eternal purpose to reconcile a lost world to Himself. Try and imagine for a moment what it must have been like for a bystander watching all that's happening to Jesus and turning to another bystander and saying, what's going on here? What's all this about? And the man replies, oh, someone called Jesus of Nazareth has been captured by his enemies, and he's unable to free himself. They've plotted to kill him, and now they're almost at the point of doing so. Poor, poor, poor man. But what is going on? is that in Christ God is reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our trespasses against us. We need to see beyond the seen to the unseen. We need to plumb beneath what our eyes can see to what the eye of faith can behold. Let me begin as we look at the passage by asking what may seem a strange question Have you ever wondered why the gospel writers dwell at such length on the circumstances of Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion? Well, maybe you're thinking, Ian, there's a very obvious answer to that, isn't there? The obvious answer is they do that to impress on us the absolute centrality of Jesus' death for the Christian faith. They're wanting to slowly but surely and deliberately accent the absolute, absolute centrality of the death of Jesus. that He was born to be a sin-bearing, sin-atoning sacrifice. Well, that's right, isn't it? Absolutely, it's right. But I think there's another related reason why they so deliberately take us step-by-step through the passion narratives, introducing us to the religious leaders, to Pilate, to the centurion, and to a whole host of others. They're wanting us to understand that Jesus is where He is as the innocent One of God. Did you notice that four times in this chapter, first of all in verse 4, and then in 19, 23, and 54, Matthew brings this out. Verse 4, Judas says, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. Verse 19, Pilate's wife sends word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man. Verse 23, Pilate says, what evil has he done? And then in verse 54, the centurion, as he sees the events that immediately follow and will come to this, the cross of Jesus Christ says, truly, this was the Son of God," four times in Matthew 27, and even more in Luke 23, five times in Luke 23, you have this reiterated refrain. It's as if the gospel writers are saying, now, do you really understand that He is there? Not because in any way He has sinned. He is there as the innocent Lamb of God who has come to be the sin-bearer of the world. Are you understanding it? He has nothing of his own to answer for before God. So why is he the innocent one there? And this is why I called this section the Covenantal Christ, because covenant is the subtext, not only of the whole Bible, which it actually is. It's very particularly the unspoken, unwritten, but deeply theological subtext of the passion narratives. He, the innocent one, is standing before God in the place of the guilty ones. You see, I remember at New College, Edinburgh University, studying theology. My professors would say, Ian, penal substitution is just wrong. It's just wrong. How can someone who is innocent be charged as guilty? How can someone who did no wrong be condemned as a wrongdoer? And of course, the answer that I was able to give and the only answer that really can be given is that He is there not as an innocent man alone. He is there as the representative covenant head of His people. What God does to His Son on Calvary's cross, He does righteously and justly. because he is there as the one who has come to stand before God in our place and for our sake. Now the background to these verses in chapter 27 lie in the Old Testament Scriptures. Remember at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, I deliver to you of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And that's why at every step in Matthew's narrative, he is making this point, he is hammering home this foundational truth that what is happening to Jesus is precisely what the Scriptures of God said would happen to the Messiah. Look at verse 34. They offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. Matthew is echoing Psalm 69 verse 21, and why does Jesus not drink the wine mixed with gall? Because it was a soporific, and he didn't want his senses to be dulled. He wanted to offer himself intelligently and rationally, not with a dulled mentality. He wanted to freely, without any dullness of spirit, offer himself to God, the just for the unjust. Then in verse 35, And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots." You see, Matthew would expect us to think, oh my, that's Psalm 22, verse 18. And down at verse 38, then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. Isaiah 53, verse 9, isn't it? Then in verse 39, those who pass by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, you who would destroy the temple in three days, save yourself. Well, what's he doing there? He's quoting Psalm 22, verse seven. Then in verse 43, he trusts in God. Let God deliver him now if he desires him. Psalm 22, verse eight. Then down at verse 48, One of them at once ran, took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink." Psalm 69, verse 21. And then in verse 57, when it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, Isaiah 53 verse 9. And Matthew was saying, now do you see, do you see that what the Scriptures foretold is coming to pass and has come to pass in the life and especially the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures. And I was thinking about this last night, and I thought, If the Word of God, the Old Covenant Scriptures are so clear, remember how Jesus on the road to Emmaus said to His disciples, O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the Scriptures testify concerning me. If the Scriptures were so clear, so plain, why were God's Old Covenant people so blind? They had the Scriptures. You know, the Pharisees were inerrantists. They believed in the verbal, plenary, jot and tittle inerrancy of Holy Scripture. They would have died for the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Word of God. And Jesus said to them in John 5, you search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, and they are the very Scriptures that speak of Me, and you're blind to it. How is it possible? How is it possible that they could have the Word of God and yet be so blind to its teaching and its truth? Many reasons can be given. The God of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not. Every unbeliever is under the spell and thralldom of the prince of darkness. But you know, there is one thing that has often struck me as I've read the Scriptures again and again, is that Israel's great sin before God It was a question one day I'm going to write in an exam for students. The great sin of Israel was disgust. I think it was the great sin of covenantal presumption. They were the blessed people of God. They had the law of God. God had given them the whole sacrificial system. They had the adoption, as Paul puts it in Romans 9. They had the privilege of being the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They had the privileges of God in all their fullness. And they thought that covenantal privilege was enough. It was enough to be blessed of God. It was enough to be privileged by God. it was enough to possess circumcision and the law and the sacrifices and the adoption, and they didn't even get their own Scriptures. Remember how in Deuteronomy in two places, is it chapter 10, verse 16, and chapter 30, verse 6, God says, I want your hearts circumcised. Covenant privilege does not automatically mean covenant salvation. You're a privileged people here. You sit under a privileged ministry every Lord's Day of your lives. You're blessed with the ministry you have, with the elders you have. You're blessed with the faithful preaching and teaching of the Word of God. You're catechized. My dear friends, none of that, none of that will bring you the salvation of God without heart, repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ. And that's the great tragedy of these religious leaders with all their covenant privileges. And Matthew is, by accenting these passages throughout the Scripture, Psalm 69, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and many others, The Scriptures foretold it, declared it, anticipated it, and yet they were blind to it. It's a wonderful thing. It's a glorious thing when someone who has been raised in a privileged way in the fellowship of the people of God who's been baptized and had the name of God placed upon them, but who's never really grasped the nature of the salvation of God. It's a wonderful thing when they sung one day, perhaps, or over a period of time, all the pieces fall into place, and they can say, with Paul, all my privileges." Remember Philippians 3, circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite of Israelites, of the privileged kingly tribe of Saul. He goes on and lists all his privileges, and he says at the end, I count them all but scubala, dung. We often don't like earthly translations. The Bible doesn't mind earthly translations. I count them dung. for the excellency of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. Well, let's look with our remaining time. I thought that would be five minutes, but it wasn't five minutes. Verses 3 to 10, Matthew records the tragic end of Judas, Jesus' betrayer. Just follow the text. Judas, you'll see, is awakened to the heinousness of his guilt. Verse 4, he's full of remorse, but he's not full of repentance. Instead of turning to God for mercy, he wallows in his guilt." Now, listen to this. Listen to this. Judas walked into hell wading through the blood of Jesus Christ. You say, That's a strong thing to say. Well, actually, I'm only quoting a Free Church of Scotland professor, John Duncan. Robert Dabney says something very similar in his theological discussions. Listen to John Duncan, men evangelized cannot go to hell but over the bowels of God's great mercies. They must wade to hell through the blood of Christ and trample that blood underfoot." Judas was filled with remorse but not with repentance. if he had only cast himself on the mercy of God. Now, don't come back and say, but it was foreordained. I know it was foreordained. But the point I want to make is this, was Judas' sin any greater than Peter's? Judas betrayed the Savior. Peter denied him three times with curses. What was the difference? The Bible doesn't always want to square polarities. We preach the Word as we find it. We don't always have to tie up the loose ends. The Bible doesn't do that. It's not a systematic theology textbook. It's an unfolding historical narrative of the work of God in redemption, and it leaves things at times bewilderingly unspecified. Was Judas' sin any greater than Peter's? What was the difference? Well, at the end of chapter 26, we saw the difference. Peter went out and wept bitterly. Now, tears alone don't signify true repentance, do they? Because Esau, Esau was filled with remorseful tears. but it was the gaze of Christ. We don't have time to look at the other Gospels. It's the gaze of Christ that pierced the heart of Peter. He went out and wept bitterly. And as the subsequent events show, his bitter weeping was the bitter weeping of heart repentance. And I simply want to say before we hurry on briefly, please never doubt that where sin abounds at its darkest and vilest, grace does much more abound. The blood of Jesus Christ, the sacrificial atoning, self-giving of the Son of God can cleanse from every sin. Then in verses 11 to 26, Jesus is arraigned before Pilate. He's already been condemned to death, as I've said, by the Jewish powers. And Pilate finds himself face to face with unblemished incarnate goodness. He calls Jesus a righteous man, you'll notice. And so he devises a plan. And here Matthew paints for us beautifully a glorious portrait of the gospel, salvation by substitution. Barabbas, the guilty, insurrectionist, blasphemer, is set free. And Jesus, the innocent righteous one, is condemned. There is a substitution. The innocent one takes the place of the guilty one, and the guilty one takes the place of the innocent one. And that's the gospel at its very heart. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. You know, the Greek verb katalaso, to reconcile, has at its root embedded meaning the idea of an exchange. And on the cross, God effected a glorious exchange. The right hand of His mercy was placed on us, and the left hand of His judgment was placed on His Son. And all that was ours was made His, and all that was His was made ours. And God effected it by His grace and love and mercy on the willing self-sacrifice of His Son. So, Barabbas finds himself, to his bewilderment no doubt, a free man. He's done nothing to deserve it. And Jesus Christ is condemned to be scourged and crucified. And just as we close, because there's just so much here, I want you to notice that Matthew does something very striking. He, in a number of ways, Matthew bookends his gospel. That is to say, with beginnings and endings that parallel one another. And one of those book-ending parallels you find in verse 40. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. In chapter 4, Matthew detailed for us the temptations of the Savior at the outset of His public ministry. He was baptized for us in the Jordan. The Spirit of God came upon him, anointing him for his public mission and ministry. And straightway, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, as the better than Adam. Adam would fail in a garden, the better than Adam would triumph in a wilderness surrounded by wild animals. And after 40 days, at his weakest, at his weakest, Satan comes. And one of his temptations, you'll remember, was Matthew 4, verse 6, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Come on, prove it, show us. And here again, the voice of Satan is heard, if you are the Son of God. My friends, you need to understand that the temptations our Lord Jesus faced were real temptations. You may then be thinking, does that mean He could have sinned? No, He was the Son of God. He could not sin, non posse, non peccari. He could not sin. But His temptations were real because they came to Him in His holy humanity. His humanity was weak and frail and fragile. Calvin puts it daringly and dramatically when he's commenting on John 1, 14, and the Word became flesh. He says, Christ took to Himself our humanity, addicted to so many wretchednesses. Is your humanity addicted to many wretchednesses this morning? Is your humanity fragile, frail? Then you have a Savior who understands your humanity from within, not by divine omniscience, but by personal human experience. He could not sin. He would not sin. He endured the cross, despising its shame. and they took Him out and they crucified the Lord of glory. They crucified the Lord of glory. Matthew doesn't record this for us, but even as He hung on the cross, He prayed, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing. Even as His own creatures impaled Him to a Roman gibbet, spat on Him, mocked Him, defiled Him. He prayed, Father, forgive them. for they know not what they do." That's why a forgiving spirit must be a mark of everyone who professes to belong to Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Lord, we acknowledge we are out of our depth, but we pray that the Holy Spirit will take the truth of our Savior and impress it freshly and powerfully upon our hearts and minds today, and we ask it in His name. Amen.