Imagine sitting in prison, on death row.  You are accused of insurrection and murder.  Your trial was swift and complete.  Guilty as charged.   You had hoped that there would be a few friends who would stand in your defense, but no one came.  So you wait, listening to your own chains rattle as you fight to keep the insects off of the one piece of stale bread that was tossed into your cold, damp cell.

On this cool spring morning, the Friday of Passover, something is different.  A crowd is gathering outside.  A crowd of your people! 

“At last, they have come in my defense,” you think to yourself.  You can see the chief priests moving to the front of the crowd to address the governor sitting in the judgment seat.  You can’t quite see the platform where they are conversing, but you have seen it before, many times.

After many uneasy minutes, the crowd stirs and shouts as if in one voice.  They are shouting your name!  Over and over they shout as your name echoes through the dark, dank cavern of your captivity. 

“BARABBAS!” The square reverberates with the cry of your name.  You are suddenly filled with hope and joy as the echoes subside. 

You think to yourself, “With this many here for me, how can the governor refuse their plea?”

Then, just as quickly as the echoes fade, a new cry erupts.  It is a bone chilling cry, crushing even the faintest hope in your soul. 

With the same fervor as the first, the shout of “CRUCIFY HIM!” echoes again and again through the halls.

“No!  Not that!” You think, “Crucifixion is the most horrific of all methods of execution.  How could my people turn on me like that?  The Romans had done thousands of crucifixions and they were quite good at it.  I really don’t want to die, but to die of suffocation, on a cross, was not what I was expecting.”

The echoes of those damning words fade and are replaced by the heavy footsteps of Roman guards, marching toward your cell.  In a matter of moments, you are chained between two of the biggest soldiers you have ever seen in your life, walking quickly toward the judgment seat you were straining to see just a few moments ago.

As you approach, you recognize the governor and his wife, and the chief priests, but who is that man with the red face on the platform with them?  He is unrecognizable as a man, but you can’t take your eyes off of him.  Most of the hair of his beard has been plucked out at the roots, leaving open sores of raw skin.  His face is purple and swollen from a very recent beating.

Your eyes catch his for an instant.  He blinks, and the chains that once held you, fall, crashing to the stone floor.  The guards that had watched your every move step quickly away.  As the governor washes his hands, other hands grab your shoulders and pull you into the crowd, past the priests and away from the judgment seat. 

“What happened?” you ask, moving through the crowd.

“You are free,” someone answers.  “He will die in your place!”

As the crowd inches its way along stone streets in the cool morning air of Jerusalem, you spot the man with the bloody face, carrying a large wooden beam.  On his head is a crown made of thorn branches.  The sharp thorns have broken the skin and blood is streaming down his neck and into his eyes.  The skin of his back is so beaten and bruised, shredded by the Roman whips, it’s as if he is wearing a purple robe of royalty.

“Who is this man who bears the cross?” you ask. 

“Some say he is the Messiah,” someone in the crowd replies.

Your eyes meet again for a brief moment.  He blinks and tears well up in your eyes. 

“This man is innocent!” you cry out, “I am the one…”  You lose focus, tears streaming down your neck, leaving stripes in the grime left over from your prison stay.

You look up and realize you are standing on a hilltop looking at a man hanging on a Roman cross, silhouetted against a darkening sky.  His blood is streaming down into the dirt at your feet.

In a brief moment of silence, you hear the man on the cross speak.

“Father, forgive them.” 

Your eyes meet once last time.  He blinks, gasps, and is gone.

With his last breath, the ground begins to shake and everyone collapses to their knees.  As you lay in the dirt with your face to the ground, you hear the Roman centurion guard cry out, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

Pastor Jay Merritt

Matthew 18:1 (NKJV)  At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

When I read verses like this in the Bible, I tend to rest my head on one hand and think, “why would you ask Jesus such a ridiculous question?”  I look at the constant battle Jesus had with the Pharisees and their nose in the air, holier than thou, front-sliding, confrontational behavior, and here, Jesus’ own disciples are infected with the same disease!

But then, isn’t this the position many of Jesus’ followers revert to?  Comparing importance and performance and jostling for position at the front of the line to heaven?  Rather than back-sliding, I call it “front-sliding.”

We could also change the question to “who then is greatest in…” the church, the office, the school, the government, your marriage?  Amen or ouch?

"Your Jesus is ideal and wonderful,” Bara Dada, of India, is to have said to a missionary before adding “but you Christians – you are not like him" (Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road, New York: The Abingdon Press,1925. (Page 114))

All around the world, Christians have missed the whole idea that we are to BE LIKE CHRIST.  That’s what the word CHRISTIAN means.  Are we like Christ?  If not, we are a stumbling block to others.

In contrast to the Pharisees, we have Jesus, humble, servant of all, who came to serve.  Jesus: who chose to wear a cross on his back, not a crown on his head.

What is equally amazing, is Jesus’ response to the question “who is the greatest?”:

Matthew 18:2-5 (NKJV)  Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.  ”

Notice the child in this drama and how the child came.  Simple obedience. 

I can imagine the child sitting on the lap of Jesus and resting the back of his head in the warm cleft between Jesus’ chest and shoulder.  Simple trust.

And then the child did something we have all forgotten how to do.  He listened.

And then Jesus spoke these piercing words:

Matthew 18:6-7 (NKJV) But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.  Woe to the world because of offenses!  For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!

I’m listening.  Are you?

While residing in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi desired to hear his friend preach at a local church.  He was refused to enter because he was not of European decent.  His companion W. W. Pearson pleaded with the greeter to let Gandhi enter the church, given Gandhi’s prominent name and position.  He still refused to let Gandhi in. (C.F. Andrews, Mahatma Gandhi’s Ideas pp. 177-178)

Later, Gandhi wrote 'Hate the sin and not the sinner' is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. (A Tussle With Power, Part IV, Chapter 9)

I’ve always wondered what would have happened if Gandhi had accepted Jesus as the Christ.  I wonder what would have happened in India where the population is 1.21 billion souls – souls that are walking far from Jesus.

Woe to the man who refused to let Gandhi in.

We are all God’s creation.  Red, brown, black, yellow, white, we are ALL precious in His sight.  The precious blood of Jesus, is the same color as the blood of each of His children.

I pray that those whom I have offended will forgive me, and will find their way back to Jesus, through a kinder, gentler soul than I.  I pray, even more, that God will forgive me.







When is the last time you paused in your busy schedule to come, with simple obedience, to hear the words of Jesus.



Have you allowed yourself to trust His words, unfiltered and unstained, straight from the red letters of His Word?



Have you come close to Him in your prayers and allowed yourself to lay yourself on His powerful chest and say “Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”



Are you listening child?







Pastor Jay Merritt