About this sermon
Isaiah foretold that the Servant would be numbered with the transgressors, and Jesus was crucified between two criminals. One mocks him even with his dying breath. The other rebukes him, confesses his own guilt and Jesus’ innocence, and asks only, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answers far beyond the request: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The thief had no baptism and no Lord’s Supper; he was saved by grace alone through faith in the crucified Christ.
Sermon transcript
As you’re being seated, let us open in God’s Word to Luke chapter 23. Luke chapter 23, I find that on page 68 in the New Testament of the Bibles that are in the pews. We’ll be reading 26 to 43. We’ll start at 26 for the purpose of giving the context, but I would put forward to you that we’ll be focusing especially on verses 39 to 43. A couple of weeks ago we read Isaiah 53, and we read about the sufferings of Christ, we could say the gospel of Isaiah. We read there that Jesus bore our griefs and our sorrows. That Jesus was for us stricken, smitten, and afflicted.
Jesus was numbered with the transgressors. Jesus’ life was a whole entire life of being numbered with the transgressors. He was baptized. to be numbered with the transgressors, to be a partaker of the wrath to come, to show that he was going to be numbered among us for we are baptized and we are baptized into him. Jesus spent much time with tax collectors and other types of sinners. He was numbered among the sinners. He was numbered among prostitutes and drunkards Jesus was among them often, but it was especially at the crucifixion where we see the fulfillment of what Isaiah tells us, that he was numbered among the transgressors, for it was there that Jesus spent time with the refuse of humanity, dying with them.
What we’re going to read about is the time where Jesus is crucified, and as he is crucified, he has a conversation with the two men on the other crosses. So, assuming you have all found it, let’s hear now God’s word. Luke 23, starting at 26. When they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus. And following him was a large crowd of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting him.
But Jesus, turning to them, said, daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
Two others also, who were criminals, were being led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
And they cast lots, dividing up his garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on, and even the rulers were sneering at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself, if this is the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up to him, offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. Now there was also an inscription above him, this is the king of the Jews.
One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at him, saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other answered, and rebuking him, said, do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he was saying, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise. Amen.
That ends the reading of God’s holy, inspired, and errant word. Let it be a delight to us. Let us go to God briefly to pray. Gracious God, as we have read of Christ crucified, Let us be, here and now, those who are able to say with Paul that we made up our mind to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. May Christ be crucified in the word of the sermon today, and may it be, though sad to us, a delight to our hearts, for therein we find eternal life. Comfort us this day.
Challenge us with your word. Delight our souls. In Jesus’ name, amen. No one who is alive is outside of the saving realm of Jesus Christ. Let me just put that for us before you right now. No one who is alive is, in one sense, outside of the saving realm of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I would talk real briefly to young people, especially you who have been brought up into a covenant family or an OPC family or a PCA family, reformed families. You are very blessed for you have had the opportunity to come to the Lord Jesus Christ at a very early age to have God’s word read to you, to hear catechism, learning to sing, to sing God’s Word, and to sing prayers, which is really what the hymns are to us, you are blessed beyond measure. And praise God when a young person comes to the Lord Jesus Christ.
But this is not the case with all people. For many people do not grow up in families that honor the Word of God. Many do not even have parents that believe. And many people go through life, many years of life, sin after sin after sin. And that’s somewhat what’s going on, or that’s very much what’s going on with these two thieves on the cross. Now, we don’t know their stories. We don’t know if these two men happened to be sons of prostitutes. We don’t know if they were sons of believers or not.
But clearly, to get to the point where they are, they have spent lives of sin to be crucified in this way. But this man comes to the Lord Jesus Christ that we’re going to read about, the thief on the cross. He is going to come to the Lord Jesus Christ at the 11th hour of life. We praise God when someone comes to Christ at an early age, and we praise God when someone, after a life of sin, comes to the Lord Jesus Christ. Both of those are wonderful in the sight of God.
There are some people who would like to make it seem as though it’s not that great to come to Christ young because you don’t have a great story to tell about your life of sin. Do not let anyone speak to you that way. Do not be envious of many people’s stories about how much closer they were to the flames when they were pulled from it as a burning wick. Praise God for your story, because your story is really the story of the Lord Jesus Christ, because you have been brought into His story. But it is not always that way. I came to Christ not in my youth, and many others do as well. The outcome is the same, though, in one sense. People go to heaven. They will enter into the new heaven and the new earth. We praise God no matter what when someone comes to Christ.
As We examine our passage, I would break it up into three separate parts. Three separate parts, if you’re taking notes or you’re really good at memory, let me just give those to you. First, two rebukes. Secondly, true repentance. And thirdly, today’s redemption. Two rebukes being the first. Three, that’s 39 and following. And then true repentance being 40. And today’s redemption, excuse me, make that 42. And then today’s redemption being 43. You don’t need to worry about the verses too much, just get those into our head. Two rebukes, true repentance, and then today’s redemption.
First thing that we see as these men begin to talk to Christ is one begins to rebuke Jesus. There is this unsympathetic thief, and he begins to ask, are you not the Christ? If so, save us and save yourself. This is the unsympathetic thief. Now some of the other gospels talk about, I know it’s Mark at least, talk about the fact that the two both rebuked him. There seems to be a change of heart among these men. But we look at the first rebuke, and that is from this one who is a deceiver. He says, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. Imagine what is going on in the mind of this man at that time. Do you think that this man is asking for Christ to save himself for Christ’s own good?
No. This man is a thief. Have you ever been deceived by a thief? Not just someone who steals something once in a while, but someone who is really, really good at deceiving you. Someone who is able to take you alongside of them and say, you know, you and I, we are in this together. Let me help you, and you help me in just a few ways. Why don’t you help me first, and then I’ll return the favor.
That’s what’s going on here. Are you the Christ? Save yourself and us. This man cares nothing about Christ. He cares only about himself. He is only looking for his own way out. For this man, Jesus is just an opportunity to get what he wants, to get taken away, to not be upon the cross. Now the other thief does mock for a time, but he seems to change his tune after a while.
But I would put forward to you what goes on during a crucifixion. We see, oftentimes, pictures of crucifixions, and I really just want to look away. I think God’s word, especially the second commandment, is very clear that we ought not to have pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why is it wrong? Well, let’s just put it aside for a moment. I think God’s word says it, but one disadvantage that we have of seeing crucifixes in Catholic churches and pictures everywhere is that It makes the cross look acceptable to us.
It makes it palatable so that we can take it in. Sometimes, when you look at a picture of Christ, it really looks beautiful. And that’s a horrible distortion of what it’s like. Do you know what happens in a crucifixion? In a crucifixion, your nails go through a person’s hands or his wrists, probably his wrists, because no bones were broken in Christ. And that going through there as he’s hanging on the cross, as people are hanging on the cross, creates a feeling as if you were to hit your funny bone. but it pulses throughout your whole arm.
And also, as you’re hanging, your shoulders will sometimes separate. And as you have your shoulders and your arms very high up in the air, you can’t breathe. So the only way that you can breathe is you have to push yourself up. You can’t do it with your hands. You have to do it with the nails that’s in your feet. You have to come up. To breathe, you have to come up to talk.
As I was wrestling with people when we were young, my brother and people, you’d have him in a hold and he’d say, I can’t breathe. And I’d say, yes you can, if you can talk. You can breathe. That’s what we talked about when we were wrestling. If you can talk, you can breathe. These men would have been unable to breathe. So they would have had to push themselves up in order to breathe. Then they can talk.
See, what’s horrible about these men mocking Christ in the way they do, especially the first thief rebuking Christ in this way, is that He’s doing so in his dying breath, unable to breathe. He pushes himself up and he rebukes Christ. It takes your energy away to have to push yourself up, and that is why eventually people just cannot. live any longer eventually. That’s why they broke the two men’s legs later on. They can’t stand up anymore then. Then they’ll just suffocate because they can’t breathe anymore.
That’s the first rebuke of the two rebukes. But the other man seems to have this change of heart and he does have a change of heart. He is looking upon Christ and he’s looking at this man who is mocking him and things change for him because he understands somehow, even though the epistle to the Hebrews had not been written yet, he understood that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. For the second thief rebukes the first thief for rebuking Christ. He says, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? Notice he doesn’t say, do you fear pain? Do you fear hell? Do you fear God? You are under the same sentence of condemnation.
How is it that somebody who is down and out like this man on the cross could find it in himself to still look down upon somebody? Don’t think that people who are in low places don’t have people that they look down upon. I’ve been to prisons to visit and to do ministry in prisons. It’s very interesting when you learn that there is a hierarchy in prisons. Prisoners who look down upon prisoners, who look down upon prisoners, who look down upon prisoners, all of them just despising one another. It’s not we’re all in this together and we’re all equally culpable.
This man is mocking Christ, even in his sad circumstances, he is still able to look down upon Christ. But the other man, rebuking him, the second thief, says words that needed to be said. Don’t you fear God. We’re getting something a little bit autobiographical there. That thief is beginning to fear God and to understand that this is no mere man. This is no simple petty thief. This is the son of God.
And he goes on and he says, we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our sins. But this man has done nothing wrong. This man is coming in touch with his own sinfulness, his own wickedness. Let us not, as sinners, ever look at other sinners and say, Well, I’m sinful, but look how sinful that person is. A little bit of self-justification, self-declaring of how good we are, even while we’re telling how bad we are. That’s not the way of the cross, and that’s not the way of Christ, because here is this man understanding his own wickedness, his own vileness. All of a sudden, this man, seeing his own vileness, sees the purity of Christ, the wonder of this one who was dying for sinners. No one who is alive is outside of the saving realm of Jesus Christ. This man rebukes the other man. But then we would move on to true repentance. True repentance.
He says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. What is the name that he uses? He says, Jesus. That sweet, sweet name, and I hope is very sweet to you. Matthew tells us that he is named Jesus because he will save his people. This man, we don’t know if he was catechized, we don’t know if he knew Joel, but he seems to at least implicitly have an understanding of what Joel would say. that he will be saved who calls upon the name of the Lord, to call upon his first name. Not just, O Christ, or O Sir, or O Lord, but intimately, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
All of a sudden, this man, who has been a fool all of his life, fool not in the sense of name-calling, but this is a man who has been foolish in unbelief, is coming to Christ, and it is a miracle. This one has probably mocked the things of God his whole entire life, but Now he is willing to be mocked with Christ. He is willing to be a fool for Christ, even as he’s being crucified with Christ. It is true of this man what Paul would say, that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. This man, by God’s grace, pushed himself up, surely took a breath, and said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
Imagine the bird’s eye view. We talk about the bird’s eye view. If we want to just look at things outside of ourselves, see things from a higher perspective, I would put forward to you today the Barnabas eye view. We don’t know if Barnabas was there, excuse me, Barabbas, pardon me, Barabbas was the criminal who was let go and Christ was crucified in his place.
His name was Barabbas. Imagine what it would be like to be Barabbas in that time and look and see three crosses and look right into the middle one and say, that should be me. It should have been me. It should have been me. But we ought to all have that type of a view. To look at Christ and say, it should have been me there for my sins. He is pure. He’s spotless. He’s the Lamb of God. He has no business there. He ought not to be there. He is not a sinner.
But I should be there. You should be there. We ought to have, if he was there, the Barabbas eye view and say, that’s where I should be. but in my place condemned he stood. We also could see the other thieves I view, the rebuking thief, the second thief, the one who came to Christ to look in his dying day to the other one and say, this could have been me.
This could have been me, but for God’s grace. Only by the grace of God we are not consumed And in that time, Jesus was still the King of Kings. And though the darkness surrounded him, never did he shine so bright as in that time. Look at the amazing and humble request of this man. He says, remember me, remember me. So much more humbler than the apostles, the disciples, who would say, I want to sit on your right hand, and I want my brother to sit on your left. Or maybe we should ask our mom, and she’ll ask for us. There’s none of that kind of arrogance. All I want to do is be remembered in your kingdom. Such, so humble.
Is it a big thing for a petty thief or for a thief to ask simply to be remembered? It is very significant to be remembered if you’re one of those. Think about this. When we think of major thugs and gangsters and thieves, we can think of people who are very well known, people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, because they had so much power. that remembered, right? But nobody remembers the nameless thief or somebody who has been murdered.
I was talking to a Philadelphia social worker one time, who was telling me the story of discussing things with… Let me just back up. This social worker was telling me about a murder. And the social worker had asked around saying, you know, who murdered this person? Was anyone ever brought to trial? And the sister of the person murdered said, you know, nobody ever found out. See, the thing about these kinds of murders, especially in a city like Philadelphia, where they average one murder a day, nobody wants to talk about it.
Somebody is murdered. Somebody is a drug dealer or a prostitute or whatever the case may be. Nobody wants to come forward. They don’t want to put themselves out there. And so there are no witnesses. The police don’t have any evidence or they have very little. And it’s pretty much forgotten. Why? Because there’s going to be another murder of thieves and people like that tomorrow. But here this man simply asks, just remember, I would rather be a doorkeeper in your house than anywhere else. Humble request.
But as is true with us, it’s true with this man, that God is always greater than we had imagined. God is always greater than we had anticipated, and he is always able and willing to do far greater than we would have asked. Ephesians 3 20 and 21 says, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory. A humble request this man gives to Christ and glorious things are going to happen to him, as we’ll see very soon.
Understand that there is a sense in which repentance is very easy to do. And there’s a sense in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to do. What do I mean? Do I just contradict myself? Not at all. Brothers and sisters, listen. It is difficult to repent because you must humble yourself and understand that you’re no better than anyone else.
As Paul would say, the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners. When we sin and when we repent, we must understand ourselves, feel ourselves to be the worst of sinners. If not, then we enter into that hierarchy where we would look down upon people who are worse sinners than us. But also I would put forward to you that it is easy to repent because we don’t do anything It’s all done for us because it is the work of God. God working in us to will to repent and to actually repent.
But understand that look what it took for this man to come to faith in Christ. He had to be bound by his hands and his feet. He had to be bound so that he could not do any more wicked works, any more wicked deeds. But what a testimony this is to the grace of God. and to the love of God, that God saves sinners wholly apart from anything that they can do. You did not bring anything to your salvation except for your sin. What did this man bring to his salvation? Nothing. Humble, humble request.
If you still believe that there is something good in you, that God chose you, I would rather you be bound like this man and enter into heaven than live a happy, healthy life and not understand our sinfulness on one hand, and the utter grace and goodness of God to save us in this way. So we have had our first two points, two rebukes and true repentance on the part of the second thief.
But then we have today’s redemption. What wonderful words from Jesus, comforting words. There were so many people there, but Jesus speaks to this one, and I would assume that he pushed himself up to speak these wonderful words. Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. At that moment, this man was receiving, or had received, all of the benefits of Christ’s redemption, even as it was taking place.
We talked a couple of weeks ago about justification. God declaring us righteous, even though we’re guilty. He declares us righteous, as if we had never sinned, and as if we had obeyed the law perfectly. This man is receiving that. This man is being adopted into the family of God. This man is being sanctified. He is a sanctified believer, we could even say.
But notice these glorious words. the blessed assurance that Jesus offers to this man. You will be with me. Don’t you long to be with Jesus? In one sense, we have Jesus with us. He has been raised, life-giving spirit, and he indwells the church. He is with us. We lack nothing at this point. But when Christ comes, we will be with him. Or, if we die before that time, we will be with Him.
What a joy to be with Jesus, and what a comfort that this man had. You’re going to be with me, with Jesus. And Jesus is not simply just speaking these words at this time. Keep in mind what Jesus is going through. Jesus did not simply undergo the pains that were brought upon him of man. He is undergoing the pain of God. Eternal torment being laid down upon him. Do you see the love of Christ for sinners? That even as Jesus is going through hell, He still cares for sinners. His plan was to die for sinners, for the love of them. And he loves them even as he is in his lowest point, being left by the Father.
And we also ought to not take these words for granted. Truly today, you will be with me in paradise. For Jesus is far more gracious than many of us. Think about many people who have done wrong, and then they come to you for help. It’s very tempting in those times, or maybe somebody has said something to you, that somebody comes for help when they’re in their time of deepest distress. And the person who is being asked for help says, you know, now you come. Now. Now you do.
You know, you spend your whole life in wickedness and sin, and now you want me to help you? Those kinds of stern remarks don’t come from Christ at all. If there was anyone who could have said that, it was Christ. But it was because of his love that he did not say those kinds of things. Truly, today, you are with me in paradise. No thought of, now that you’re in a pickle, you want me to get you out. You will be with me in paradise.
This man, This thief who is dying upon the cross is very useful to us. In the old Puritan sense we can say, what are the uses of this text? Well, we’ve talked about many of the uses of it so far. But I would put forward to you, brothers and sisters, that this is a very important man for us as we try to understand the doctrine of salvation and of our redemption.
This man did no good works, but he goes to heaven. I have heard people say, you know what is wrong with Christianity? It is that that you can be a horrible, wicked sinner your whole life, and at the end, come to Jesus, accept Jesus, and it’s all forgiven, and you go to heaven. And I have to tell you that I cringe when I hear non-believers say that. Because I say, I hope so. Not that I want to live any type of sin. I want to avoid it. We want to avoid sin at all cost. But that’s the very gospel.
That people are saved because they’ve done nothing but Christ has died for them and rose again for their justification. put forward to you that this man is a trump card for anyone who thinks that good works will get you into heaven. This man can’t do any good works. He’s crucified. He’s bound. He can’t give a large check to a charity and have a photo op. He can’t blow his horn and talk about all the good works that he has done. Yet, this man is saved.
There are people who will tell you that you must be baptized to be saved. But this man is not baptized. We have no evidence of that. Baptism does not save you. It’s a sign and a seal of what God is doing on the cross and doing to you and for you and through you. This man is a trump card. It shows you can’t believe that. This man is saved without being baptized.
There are those who would say that you must have the Lord’s Supper in their church. But this man takes no Lord’s Supper at all. Not at all. There are those who would say that you have to have what is called last rites. You have to have a priest come to you and bless you in certain ways in order for you to go to heaven. This man has none of that. There are no good works that are going to get us to heaven.
Islam is on the rise in our day. I don’t want us to be scared of Islam. We have Christ and we are in Him. What is Islam? All it is, is five things. Five good works that you’re supposed to do and then you’re supposed to hope that God will save you. You’re supposed to say that God is Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. You have to go to Mecca. You have to give good, you have to pray five times a day. You have to give alms. You have to do all these five things.
It’s very simple really. But this man did none of these. He gave no alms, he did not go to Mecca, he didn’t go anything. Yet, this man is saved. Without the sacraments, without anything. Christ fulfills the simple. is the substance that fulfills the symbol. But there is, in a sense, a way that this man is baptized, and he is circumcised, and he is partaking of the Lord’s Supper, because at that moment in belief in Christ, he is being fed by Christ, by the cross, what the Lord’s Supper really is a sign for. This man is partaking of the substance of baptism. He is being crucified with Christ, meaning he is believing in him.
There are those who would believe that strange things are gonna happen to you when you die. Like, when you die, you’re going to go to a place called purgatory. And all of the sins that you have not yet repented of, those sins are gonna have to be burned off of you. for thousands of years. Then you can go to heaven.
None of that. This man is told, today you will be with me in paradise, not today you will go to purgatory and burn for thousands of years and then you’ll be able to come in to my kingdom and what a joy that will be have fun while you’re there not at all there are those who would believe in something called soul sleep where souls actually see are they’re not conscious of their existence until the resurrection time but Clearly in Jesus’s mind this Jesus has in mind a conscious understanding of his existence afterward today you will be with me in paradise and We’ll put one last thing before us today. It’s just the scandal of the deathbed conversion the scandal of the deathbed conversion, what I was talking about just a moment, a couple of moments ago, the thing that is the greatest scandal to the non-Christian world, that someone can live a horrible life like this thief, and still go to heaven. There is a sense in which we can take comfort in a deathbed conversion, and there is a sense in which we cannot. There is a sense in which we can.
Why? Because no one who is alive is, in a sense, outside of the saving realm of Jesus Christ. We must continue to pray for people who are outside of Christ. It is not too late. God may do a miraculous work in that person. We can take comfort in our loved ones who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, we must not quit praying because God works through prayer.
But also, we must not take comfort in a different way. There is a Puritan theologian who says, let me quote him, there is one such case of deathbed conversion or death cross conversion recorded in scripture. that none need despair, but only one that none may presume. There is one that none need despair, but there is only one we ought not to presume. We ought not to presume that we’re going to have a deathbed.
God could take us in a surprise way, who knows what sort of way. Do not wait if you are outside of the fold of Christ. Come to Christ today. Come to Christ now. Make your calling and your election sure, like this man. Today is the day of salvation. No one who is alive is outside of the saving realm of Jesus Christ. Is that you? Is that someone for whom you care? Let us pray for them and for ourselves.
Our Heavenly Father, As we are believers for long amounts of time, it is very easy for us to lose our first love and it is very easy for us to begin to have a pharisaical spirit and think that those who are outside of our group, our family, our denomination, our nation, are lower than us. Help us to look to the cross in the only way that we can by making ourselves low, by being like this man, by being found in Christ. Thank you that there is still hope that we have for your thoughts are not our thoughts and we do not know the end from the beginning as you do. Help us to pray for those who do not know you that are very dear to us. and help us to not take for granted what we have, being in Christ, this thing which is wholly a work of God, namely the salvation of our souls. May it ever be sweet to our tasting. In Jesus’ name we do pray, amen.
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