Join me in your Bibles this morning
to Luke 23 as we continue through this Gospel narrative. At this point in our study, our
Lord has been crucified. He's hanging on the cross. They're
there for a number of hours excruciating situation, him and
the two thieves that were crucified with him. Normally this type of death could
take days because it was a kind of a, kind of a, put you in a
position where you kind of suffocated over time. You just, you just
lacked ability to breathe over time in the way they had you
hang there. If you were able to push yourself
up with your feet, you could get a little respite from that
and catch a little breath of air, and it would prolong the
situation. And as the Jews were in a hurry to
put the Lamb of God to death so that they could go put the
Lamb of God to death, as it were, at the Passover. They said, break
their legs. Well, the reason they wanted
to break their legs is so they couldn't raise themselves up
and they would suffocate quicker and they would die not only from
the shock of that kind of... Can you imagine the methodology
that they would use to break their legs? Probably not pleasant. So they probably used something
that was handy, a club or a rock or whatever. So anyway, that's where we're
at in today's lesson regarding these two thieves that were crucified
with Jesus. So beginning in Luke 23, 32,
and there were also two other male factors. led with him to
be put to death. And when they were come to the
place, which is called Calvary, the Latin word for the skull
and Golgotha was the Greek term for that. They were crucified.
They crucified him in the male factors, one on the right hand
and the other on the left. And then said, Jesus, Forgive
them, for they know not what they do. And they parted his
raiment and cast lots, and the people stood beholding. And the
rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others.
Let him save himself, if he be the Christ, the chosen of God."
What a mocking thing to say. What a taunting remark. And the soldiers also mocked
him in coming to him and offering him vinegar and saying, If thou
be the king of the Jews, save thyself. And a superscription
also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin,
and Hebrew, This is the King of the Jews. And one of the male
factors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be the
Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked
him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same
condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we
receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done
nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said
unto him, Verily, for of a truth I say unto thee, Today shalt
thou be with me in paradise. So there's quite a lot to unbundle
there and we're not gonna Much of it we touched upon in our
other times that we studied Mark and John and so a couple of different
things that we want to look at today in in this block of scripture
and As I mentioned in this this The
other two thieves, they were called thieves and Mark and John
mentioned there, but they don't mention him conversing with Jesus. They just mentioned that there
were two thieves crucified with him, one on the left, one on
the right. And Luke is the one that brings us this special portion
that's just so, it's not a very big piece of scripture, but there's
so much in it. It's just such a wonderful block
because it describes what every child of God has gone through
in truth. And it describes a lot of what
is gone through by religious folks. Today's lesson is titled The
Paradise of God, but that's kind of the last sentence of the scripture. And I don't know if we'll get
to that part today, but a pretty significant portion there. But today we're going to look
at these two thieves, and we're not going to really read much
from John and Mark because it just said they were thieves.
They were insurrectionist robbers. Probably career criminals had
been tried, convicted, and sentenced to execution by the Romans, who
had the only power to do that. And crucifixion was the Roman
method of dealing with it. The Jews' method was stoning.
Which they did, although they said they didn't have the power
to even do that, but they did. In the Bible said they stoned
certain ones. So the Romans had sentences to
execution in this most hideous way, most public way. And they
had a, probably each one of them had a superscription over their
that we talked about in our last class called the accusation that
said this guy was an insurrectionist, this guy was a murderer, this
guy was a robber. That's what they would have put
on Barabas's cross had he been there. And so these guys had
been caught doing whatever they did, plunderers, robbers, So the one, though, something
happens. And we're going to kind of imagine
ourselves their firsthand witnesses as these three are on the cross. We have this poor, raggedy, pitiful-looking,
beat-up thing in the middle that's our Lord, bleeding from everything. He'd been scourged. Now, it doesn't
tell us that the other criminals had been scourged. But it tells
us that Jesus was scourged because that's what was written in Isaiah. With His stripes, we are healed.
But these were just crucified. It doesn't say what other punishments
they may have had inflicted on them. They're mocking Him. He doesn't
look very kingly, because it said King of the Jews in Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew on His cross. He doesn't look much like a king,
does He? He doesn't look much like He could do anything. He's
hanging there, looks like He's barely clinging on to life, bleeding. And they're mocking Him, because
that's how He looks. But in truth, He was what the
sign, what the accusation said He was. He was the King, the
King of glory. And so as we look at this situation
here, and in our last lesson, we again brought out the natural
condition of man and sin. as stated by the one thief that
was crucified with him on the right side of Jesus. We are indeed
guilty. We deserve what's happening. And one was brought to an understanding
regarding the guiltiness of our position by nature by the most
holy God. And the other one, if you think about it, he's hanging
there. hours or minutes from death,
and he's got so much life left in him, and he's got so much
energy left in him, and what's he do? curses God right to the
very end. He's like railing on him and
mocking him and saying, hey, if you were really the king,
save us. And he meant it in a physical
way, not anything to do spiritually. He just wanted down off that
cross. He wanted not to die that day is what he wanted. And he
wanted not to die in that painful manner. But the other one is
brought to a sense of a need for a savior, a daisman, as we
brought out in our last class from Job, an intercessor. And what we find here is the
natural man. And they were both in this condition
at the beginning of this scene. They were both crucified at the
same time, and they were both railing on Him. The Scriptures
say they both cast the same in His teeth. The Jews were mocking
Him, and the people were mocking Him, saying, if you're the King,
come down off that cross, save yourself. And they cast the same
in His teeth, both of them. Well, the natural man has no
part, ability, nor right to participate in the spiritual things of God.
That's what it tells us in 1 Corinthians 2.14. The natural man receives
not the things of the Spirit of the God, and not because he
doesn't want them, which he doesn't. But they're not offered to him. They're not, he receiveth not. Receiving, when you receive something,
it means that somebody gives you something. You don't receive
something out of thin air, out of nothing. If you receive, what
does man have but what he receives? That's what this Bible tells
us. So the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God, the gift. He doesn't receive the gift of
God because it was not given to him. And their foolishness
to him, even if they were extended without the new birth, he would
not accept them because their foolishness to him. Can you imagine
the one thief on the right says, Lord, he says, he tells the other
guy to stop. Stop taunting him. Stop mocking
him. That's the Lord. And it's not foolishness to him anymore.
And he tells that other guy, stop. And he calls him Lord.
And you imagine the other guy, and I know how many in here have
had the experience when somebody says something about the Lord,
and you say, you know, that's the Lord God Almighty. Do you
not fear God? And they say, oh, did you go
and get religious on us? Because that's probably what
that other thief said. Oh, great. We're dying up here and you just
got religion. That's not going to help us.
We're both going to be dead here in a bit. And that's how they
look at things. The natural man receiving not
the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto him,
neither can he know them. That word can speaks to ability. No ability to know or understand
them because they're spiritually discerned. And certainly this
one thief, this one robber, this plunderer is what the Bible says
he was, who was joined with the other thief and those gathered
to blaspheme the Lord, to mock him and to taunt him. He fit that description. He was
in that boat. Because they both were doing
it. The same as all of us. And maybe we come from a religious
background, and we would never say anything bad about God in the way that we think about
him. But it turns out in religion, many of the ways that we think
about him are not right. And so many of the things that
we say about him in religion that are not because we're thinking
about him in not a right way turn out to be lies about him.
But we don't think about them in that way. We think, oh, I'm
religious. I go to church all the time,
but I say a bunch of things about the Lord God Almighty that are
just not the truth. So they're taunting the one in
the middle, the one who appeared so far from even being able to
save himself, let alone anyone else. And yet He was the Savior
of the world, the Savior of all of His people from every kindred,
tongue, and tribe, and nation. Savior of all the ones whom the
Lord gave Him in the covenants in John 17. As Thou has given Him power over
all things, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou
has given Him. Thine they were, Thou has given
them to me. That's what it says in John 17.
And so this one is still in that unregenerate state where the
gospel is foolishness to him. The guy next to him looks awful. What can you do? You can't. You're the least person to be
able to do anything for me. Yet something happened to him
in those hours of agony. It says there was darkness from
the third hour until the ninth. So there's a time there. They're hanging there. Because
we read it in like 15 seconds. We read that whole block of scripture.
So that's our time reference that we have for that. It doesn't
take very long to read it. But they were there all day. And the Jews were worried that
they'd still be there at sunset at the beginning of the Sabbath.
And if there was dead criminals hanging around, they couldn't
deal with it. So they said, break their legs. We need to get them
down. We'll take these prisoners, these thieves, and we'll cast
them over into the bone pit over there in the Valley of Gehenna.
where we get rid of all the refuse and criminals and that sort of
thing. And of course, we know that Jesus
was spoken for by one that said, I'll take him and put him in
a tomb, just as the scripture said. But something happened in those
times, those hours of agony. where both the thieves were using
what little time they had left to hurl insults at the Lord of
Glory, the Prince of Life, just like today. The Jews were anxious for this
to be over with so that they could make preparations for the
Passover lamb. It's such an ironic tale here. They said, we need to get him
down off there so we can go celebrate the Passover. So, you know, they were there
according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God to accomplish, but no understanding because of what it says in Corinthians. Natural man doesn't receive those
things, neither can he know them, can't understand them. So what
happens to this one thief? Well, the miracle of grace, the
miracle of salvation. And it's just a classic instance
because it's so simple. And it takes all the religiosity
out of things. The miracle of salvation. You
know, in John 3, and we read this all the time, and the more
I read it, the more I appreciate it, that unless a man be born
again, he can't see the kingdom of God. Can't see it. He can read the
Bible till he's blue in the face. He can have somebody preach the
gospel to him until they're blue in the face. But until he's born
again, he can't see it. All he can see is, what do I
need to do? What shall I do to be saved?
What shall I do? What shall I do? The ragged man on that cross
next to Him suddenly became illuminated to Him in His true state, the
Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. Now, it's unlikely
that these guys, they were Jews, probably, that were being crucified. You probably would have had to
just be deaf and blind not to have any knowledge of the Old
Testament and those things if you were a Jew in that region
of the world at that time. It was just part of your existence. And they knew the Passover lamb. They knew the gospel that was,
they didn't understand it, they couldn't see it, but they'd probably
been familiar with some aspect of it being read to them or quoted
to them on every Sabbath day, but they couldn't see it. So
what happened to this guy? A man's heart was changed, and
he was given a new heart to know God. Isn't that just exactly
what it tells us over in Ezekiel? If we were to go over to Ezekiel
36 and read verse 22 through 31, God says, I'm going to take you out of
the heathen world. that world where he was one with
the guy on the other side of Jesus. That's who his world was. That's the heathenness of it. They were companions in crime
and sin and unbelief. I'm going to take you out of
that, and I'm going to give you a new heart, a heart to know
me. He didn't give that to the other
guy. But he gave it to this man. And he says, Lord, remember me
when thou comest into thy kingdom. Well, a minute ago, he was saying,
come down off there if you can and save yourself and save us.
And you're not king of nothing. You're just a deplorable, useless thing, hang in there,
you're worse than us. At least we're not bleeding out
of every pore. His taunting, and this is a part
that's interesting. His taunting is in his sins and
his associations, just like it says in Ezekiel, we're loathsome
to him now. Because he tells the other guy,
stop that. Don't you fear God? He says, we're getting what we
deserve, but this man has done nothing amiss. Stop taunting
him. And don't we have that same thing
today? We have people that taunt Jesus all the time, and sometimes
we look the other way because they're family or friends, and
we don't want to cause a dispute. But it hurts. It's hurtful to
us when they do that. And then later we think, well,
I should have probably told them, stop that. Don't you fear God. It's just one of the things that
the scripture just points us out. And once you're born again,
you see these things and you don't, until then, you don't
really see them. The scene here so accurately
portrays sovereign grace in salvation. You know, this man didn't have
any chance to meet any conditions of salvation like what you would
run into in religion. We haven't gone to church, not
once. You haven't been baptized, you're
out. You can't be in the bride if
you're not baptized. No communion. No tent meeting where some emotional
manipulation was employed to get you to come on down and do
all that stuff. No, if you want to meet Jesus,
just repeat this prayer after me. If you want to have a relationship
with Jesus, just say this prayer after me, and then here's an
800 number to call. and have your bank account number
handy so that you can contribute to us keeping this stuff going. It costs money to have commercials
on TV. It costs money to have ads put in the magazines and
whatnot. It costs money to have that guy
stand there and tell you those fibs. There was no canned prayer, no
repeat-after-me salvation, just sovereign intervention by God
for one of his elect. He didn't have time to take some
of his ill-gotten gains and support a hospital in Uganda, or dig
a well in Ethiopia, or contribute to some worthy cause globally,
wherever. You didn't have a chance to do
anything good. In fact, we might just say this guy had no merits
at all. Isn't that what we could say? He was meritless. He was worse
than meritless because it says he was a scoundrel. He was a
thief. Maybe even a murderer. But he had been brought to this
very point in time for this very intersection with the Lord of
Glory at this moment. I bet he would be the most surprised
person in the world if Jesus would have said, guess what?
You're going to be in the New Testament and Luke chapter 23, verse 43,
and millions of people are going to read about me saving you.
He would have probably said, no, not possible. Look at me. He's like Paul. Paul said, I
am the least of all. I'm the least. I'm the most worthless. His repentance was a direct result
of the new birth. Because like in Ezekiel, it says,
I'm going to give you the new heart, the heart to know me. And after that, This is what's
going to happen. I'm getting what I deserve. This
man is guiltless. This man is sinless. He's like
the publican. You know, you ever think about
that story that Jesus said, a Pharisee and a publican went down to the
temple to pray. And he tells what the publicans
prayer was, I thank God I'm not like other men and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. Well, what was the essence of his prayer? There was not one thing in there
that glorified God. There was not one thing that
says, Lord, align my will with yours or anything good. It was just like, I'm glad I'm
not like that guy. And the publican, the tax collector
said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That was his prayer. God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
And that guy said, Lord, remember me. Think about me when you come
into your kingdom. And he said, today, shalt thou
be with me in paradise. Verse 43. And in the little bit of time
left, we're going to kind of go back in time and think about
the things that cause all this to come to be. You know, in the
fall, it brought a complete change in man due to sin. Man was in a different state
before he sinned. He was in a state of fellowship
with God. God came down to the garden daily,
He said, and walked in the garden. He created all things. He created
this wonderful environment for man to be in this garden. And in the creation, all the garden and everything
that God created, we were talking about creation this morning in
our meeting before the services here, and In creation, everything was originally
designed to and for the glory of God and for His pleasure.
That's what the Scriptures tell us. All things were created by
Him and for Him and for His pleasure. They were and are created. And
then it tells us, and by Him all things consist. Everything
is held together by His will. Cohesive, everything is brought
together and held together by His will. But then the fall happened
and everything was different. Cursed is the ground for thy
sake. I was reading a commentary, he says, well, he didn't say
the man was cursed, he said the ground was cursed. And he says,
where before you were going to try to, you were to do things
to bring glory to God, now you're going to be toiling
in the curse. And that affects man's nature
in that everything that he does from a natural standpoint is
based in that. and it's all rooted in that curse. It's all rooted in that sin.
It's all rooted in that fault. The only thing that's not rooted
in there is after the new birth, and he says, God, be merciful
to me, a sinner. You know, Adam went right to
the end saying, it's not my fault. You gave me the woman. Actually,
it's your fault. You gave me the woman. Would I be standing right here
if you hadn't given me that woman? No, wouldn't I? But that's just
being facetious. But that's just that he went
right up to the end until the Lord God made clothes, skins
for them and clothed them. You know, somebody was talking
about Colossians this morning, but in Colossians 1, verses 16-22,
it tells us that, For Him were all things created, or by Him
all things were created that are in heaven and that are in
the earth, visible and invisible. The things we can't see. Remember
a couple of lessons ago we were talking about Elisha and his
servant. And the servant had the physical
view of things. And Elisha prayed, open his eyes
that he could see. And the Lord opened his eyes,
and he saw that the valley was filled with chariots and the
army, the host of the Lord God of heaven. And he went, whoo. They were right there all the
time, but he just couldn't see them. And we may explore that
a little bit later when we start talking about, today thou shalt
be with me in paradise. You know, last week I was reading
some, well, they just found the farthest away galaxy by using
the James Mann telescope or the Hubble telescope, one of those
telescopes that's up there in space that allows them to see
a really long way out there. And when they can see a really
long way out there, They found out that there's still a really
long way out there. It's just no end to it. And they said, well, we thought
we knew where stuff used to start from, but it turned out not. It's just farther and farther
and farther and farther away. And so when we think about the
paradise of God, it's like, How long of a trip is that? They
said, well, the nearest star that we've identified is 400,000
light years away. That's the distance light travels
in a year, speed of electricity. 186,000 feet per second or miles
per second, I think it is. It's way out there. And when
you get way out there, there's just more way out there. So we'll kind of look at that
spiritually here a little bit more if we have time. I don't think we'll have time
today, but let's look over there at Colossians. It's just another one of those
places where you just can't crash right into. In Colossians 1,
talking about Jesus who delivered us from the power of darkness
and translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, and in whom
we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of
sins, that very blood that was shed there on that cross there
that we're reading about over here in Luke. He said, who's
the image of the invisible God? We can't see him, the firstborn
of every creature. For by him were all things created
that are in heaven and in the earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones or dominions, principalities, powers. All things
were created by him and for him, and he is before all things.
And by him, all things consist. By him, they not only exist,
but they're held together. all those strange magnetisms
and gravitational things that we read about in physics, holding
everything together by the law of the nature of God. And he's
the head of the body of the Church, who's the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.
And having made peace through the blood of his cross by him
to reconcile all things to himself, all those things that were opposed
to him, By him I say, whether they be
things in the earth or things in heaven, and you that were
sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now hath he reconciled. And of course, it's written to
this church of believers there, Colossia, and that's who this
is addressed to, the church there, and believers everywhere. He's
reconciled in the body of his flesh through death. to present
you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight." Boy,
what a wonderful thing if that thief on the cross only knew,
if he only lived long enough to read Colossians, he would
have said, oh man, how wonderful. In his state there, he just said,
I need an intercessor for sin. I need to be blameless. When I meet God, I need someone. I need an aidesman. So when we go back to Genesis
chapter 3, and it tells about the fall, and the result of that
was they hid themselves from God amongst the trees of the
garden. In verse 24 of Genesis 3, it
says, God drove out the man, and he placed at the east of
the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned
every way to keep the way of the tree of life." It's interesting
too, there's another verse in the psalm that says, Awake, O
sword. And we don't have time to go
into that today, but I think those two verses are linked.
I think they're complementary of one another. And so we see
from our text, The compulsory and prerequisite
necessity of a transition, because man in the fall was driven out,
he was dead in trespasses and sins, estranged from the fellowship
of God and all things spiritual, and no ability to change that
on his own. So there had to be this change
that we read about in Ezekiel. a change that spiritually happens
in the new birth, and then another change that happens when we end
up like this thief on the cross, when we leave this world and
we go to what is called, thou shalt be with me today in paradise. So, there has to be a couple
things that happen. The flesh Our nature in this
world is corrupt and cannot enter or participate in that realm. That's what it says in 1 Corinthians
15, 50. Flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. And that's true of a physical
sense and a spiritual sense at the same time, because flesh
and blood cannot inherit spiritual things. We have to be born again
in that spiritual new birth. The flesh and blood that we have
in this world is not going to enter into the spiritual kingdom. It's going to be changed because
it says at the resurrection, we shall be changed. In the twinkling
of an eye, we shall be changed. And this corruption shall put
on incorruption, this mortality shall put on immortality. All
those things that are connected to our worldly condition, our
worldly body, and those will all be altered, all be changed. So our body in this world doesn't
allow a transition to a spiritual realm and there must be a change
wrought in us the same as is externally imposed on us in the
new birth. the change we call death, when
the body that we're assigned in this world returns to dust,
as it says in Genesis 3.19. From dust thou art and to dust
thou shalt return. But the new birth gives us a
new perspective on our existence and our true relationship in
the spiritual world of God. You know, Jesus said, these are
in the world. And a couple of verses later
he says, but they are not of the world. And so this thief
recorded for us as a pattern of true salvation. He was unable
to do anything for himself, given the new birth just before he
passed on. And then the Lord said, today
shalt thou be with me in paradise. And so in our next lesson, probably
be a couple of weeks, I'll be gone next week. We'll be looking
at the paradise of God. Is it a place or is it more of
a person or is it some kind of a combination of the two? Being with Jesus is
paradise, wherever that may be. So we'll look at that next time.
And until then, thank you for your attention. Be free because
the Lord was on the cross paying our sin debt.