Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise Series

Jesus hung on the cross for six agonizing hours before succumbing to the torture of crucifixion through asphyxiation. During that time, Jesus made seven statements on the cross that were recorded in the four gospels of the New Testament. Each one of these statements is significant and worthy of every drop of your mental power.

I invite you to turn to Luke 23 with me this morning. To prepare our hearts to celebrate Easter in a month, I want you to devote your mind and heart to these seven statements of Jesus while hanging on the cross.

The universal symbol of Christianity is the cross, the old rugged cross. While the empty tomb is the foundation of Christianity, the cross is the focus of Christianity.

Today, we refer to this as Calvary, which comes from the Latin word for “skull.” With no sleep and being bounced from trial to trial, Jesus must endure even more torture. Tucked away in the midst of the agonizing story of Jesus’ death is the famous story of the dying thief.

Today’s Scripture

“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).

Three Dying Men

Had you gone to Jerusalem that day so long ago, and had you gone just outside the wall to the north, out through the Damascus Gate, there you would have seen a rocky outcropping. And there, you would have seen three crosses, with three men on those crosses.

During Jesus’ six agonizing hours on the cross, Jesus made seven statements, and none was more shocking than His offer of mercy to the Dying Thief. It’s 9 a.m. on Friday morning, and Jesus is being led to Golgotha, the site of His execution. You would have seen on that one cross a thief to the left. And a thief to the right as well. On that middle cross would have been the very Son of God. Someone has observed that Jesus did not die in a cathedral between two candles. He died on a cross between two nameless criminals. We don’t know the names of either one of these men. It is the only time we read about them in the Bible. Three men died that day on a cross. One was a Savior, one was a sinner, and one was a saint. Each of the three dying men has something to say to us.

1. The Wrong Choice

2. The Right Choice

3. The Only Choice

1. The Wrong Choice

“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” (Luke 23:39)!

He is classically known as the impenitent thief. He ridiculed Jesus in the last hours of his life.

1.1 Jesus Surrounded by Scoffers

He’s just one scoffer among many that day. Jesus is surrounded by scoffers. The priests ridiculed Jesus as did many in the crowds of Jerusalem during that holiday weekend so many years ago. God, the Father, selected some sorry company for Jesus’ last hours. Jesus was a sheep surrounded by wolves, was He not? With convicts on both sides of Him, Jesus hung there for hours, hearing every single syllable of ridicule. Nobody knows who arranged that Jesus died between these two thieves. No, we don’t know how it exactly happened, except it is a fulfillment of scripture because the Prophet Isaiah predicted the Messiah would be crucified with what he called “the wicked” (Isaiah 53:9).

Most of the disciples fled from Jesus. Jesus was left to die among the those who ridiculed him: “So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 ‘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. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:41-43). And if that wasn’t enough, Jesus was surrounded by ridicule in surround sound for the first several hours: “And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way” (Matthew 27:44).

Today, we would call them hoods, thugs, terrorists, or cutthroat killers. They were not guilty of misdemeanors but the worst felons you could imagine. They were bad dudes. They would kill you for fun or kill you for profit. Sometimes both.