Amy C Walters

Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified | Luke 23:13-25

The crowd at Jesus’ trial is surprisingly intense. They’re shouting, insisting, demanding. They won’t settle for Jesus punished–they want him killed. And to do it, they’re willing to trade him for a murderer. What trades do we make when God doesn’t do what we want him to do? 

One of the main characters in this story is the crowd. We’re told that it includes the chief priests, the rulers, and the people. But they’re treated in this story as one unit. 

And this group is intense. Some of them have been up all night with Jesus’ arrest and the trial at the high priest’s house. The day before, they had celebrated the Passover, a huge holiday, so that would have been a long day. Lots of family, lots of activity. They’ve been shuttled back and forth between Pilate then Herod and now back to Pilate as they pursue the death penalty. So they’re probably tired and hungry and impatient.

But they’re also fired up and will not take “no” for an answer. Did you notice Luke’s emphasis on their shouting? He mentions it four times.

First, when Pilate explains that he’s going to punish and then release Jesus, they all shout that they want Barabbas instead. Then with Pilate’s second appeal, they shout, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Next is when Pilate appeals to them for a third time. And this time we’re told that “with loud shouts, they insistently demand” it. Finally, we’re told that the crowd’s shouts prevailed.

So imagine that scene for a moment, that you are in the crowd. What would it be like? It would be loud and intense. It would be like a powder keg ready to explode as everyone around you is chanting. It would be scary to be on the wrong side of it.

But shouting isn’t the only thing to note from this crowd. Luke uses a lot of strong language to describe the mood of the setting. In the previous story, and one that this story is a continuation of, Luke says that the crowd was urgent and that they vehemently accused Jesus (Luke 23:10).

In verse 23, it says that they are “insistently demanding.” And what are they demanding? They want the death penalty for Jesus. Crucifixion. It mentions that several times. The crowd chants, “Crucify him, crucify him!” And then they insistently demanded that Jesus be crucified. 

So they don’t just want him punished. They want him killed. They don’t just want him to go away for a little bit. They want him gone for good. 

I wonder if the religious leaders are afraid of him. Maybe in the back of their minds, they fear that if they do anything less than death, that he would be too powerful to succumb to it. 

Now, in this crowd’s minds, Jesus deserves death because he is claimed to be the Messiah. That’s breaking their laws. So on the surface, they seem to be passionate for the law. 

And yet in the process, they are breaking the law. They’re holding an illegal trial in the middle of the night on a holiday with no witnesses and lies for charges. They’re willing to set aside the law if it serves their purposes. 

Why are they so intense? Why shout and demand and chant for Jesus’ death? Maybe because they have to drown out their own consciences, knowing that Jesus is innocent. They have to overcome the mountain of evidence that says they are wrong, not Jesus. Often, we are the loudest and most merciless when we’re trying to hide our own sin.

When Pilate pushed again to try to release Jesus, the crowd had one more demand to make. They say, “Away with Jesus, release to us Barabbas.” 

Now, this is a horrible trade. Barabbas had led an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government. The crowd has no love for the Romans, but often the Romans would respond to riots and protests with harsh and bloody crackdowns that impacted far more people than the riot or the protest did in the first place. 

The historian Josephus recorded an event where Pilate took some money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct, and when the Jewish people protested, Pilate sent soldiers into the crowd in disguise who then pulled out swords and stabbed people. They killed a bunch of people that day. So having a rebel and insurrectionist like Barabbas running around free was a threat to everyone. 

Notice how Luke specifically points out that the crowd had asked for this trade. It says, “Pilate released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.” So they knowingly made this trade. They insisted upon it.

It’s easy for us to look down on them and say, what a foolish decision. But you know what? Whenever we put anything above God in our life, we make that same trade.

• We trade the wisdom and the power and the glory of God for things that we think will solve our problems or make us feel better in the moment, but they will only come back and bite us. 
• We trade time with God for mindless scrolling on our phones or five more minutes of sleep. 
• We trade waiting for God’s perfect timing and blessings for our own impatient plans and faulty solutions.
• We trade our wedding vows before God for flings that make us feel better temporarily, but ruin our lives and families. 
• We trade the community that God has given us for petty arguments about things that don’t matter. 
• We trade eternal life for immediate comfort, or the freedom we have in Jesus for slavery to sin, grace for legalism, peace of God for anxiety and worry, salvation for self-righteous struggle.
• We trade God’s perfect righteous rule to put ourselves on the throne. 

Our key truth for today is, don’t trade Jesus for anything else. 

Nothing else can save or satisfy. But like with the crowd, we can so easily get caught up in emotions, or we insist on things going the way we planned, or we’re carried away by culture and the people around us.

We desire pleasure and attention and control and money and predictability and formulas. So we choose those things over God.

They are all a poor substitute for our righteous, powerful, wonderful Savior.