The three men struggle as they carry their cross beams through the Jerusalem streets. Two of them wear signs around their necks that say “kakourgos” (kaw-coor-gos). The third prisoner lags behind … beaten and broken and so badly torn up that someone has to help Him carry His cross beam. His sign says: “Jesus of Nazarth: King of the Jews” in three different languages … Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.
Rocks and rotten vegetables and insults rain down on them. The agony … the heat … the twisted faces of the taunting, jeering crowd line the streets. It seems like it will go on forever … but it doesn’t. Eventually they reach their dreadful destination … Golgotha … The Place of the Skull.
All three crosses are laid on the ground. The two “kakourgai” are tied to their crosses … their crosses lifted up and dropped into the holes that had been dug that morning by other Roman prisoners. But the third prisoner … Jesus of Nazareth … the King of the Jews … received special treatment. His hands and feet were nailed to His cross beam and ropes were tied around His wrists to keep the nails from tearing through His flesh from the weight of His body. When the cross beam was in place, they nailed His feet to the upright and tied them with ropes to, again, keep the nails from tearing through His flesh from the weight of His body. When they were finished, Jesus hung suspended on a cross between two “kakourgai.”
“Kakourgos” is usually translated as “robber,” “highwayman,” or “bandit.” “Kakourgai” is the plural of “kakourgos.” “Kakourgai” were much, much worse than your garden variety pickpocket or shoplifter or burglar. “Kakourgai” ambushed defenseless travelers … beating them, stripping them of their possessions, and leaving them for dead … much like the poor victim in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Kakourgai were often convicted and crucified outside the city gates by the Romans as a way of sending a very clear and very graphic message to any would-be highwaymen in the hopes of discouraging them from following the example of kokourgai like these two criminals suspended on either side of Jesus.
We don’t know much about these two “kakourgai,” so, to make it easier for us to identify which “kukourgos” … or highwayman … I’m talking about this morning, I’ll call them “Demas” and “Festus.”
As these three men hung there, a crowd gathered to watch and to stare. As much as the people hated kakourgai, their attention … and their anger … was focused on the man hanging in the middle. “He saved others, let Him save Himself if He is the Messiah, the Chosen One,” one man jeered (Luke 23:35). “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:40). Another shouted from the back of the crowd. “If His is the King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross and we’ll believe Him” (Matthew 27:42).
Even the Roman soldiers get in on the fun, offering Him sour wine and echoing the taunts of the crowd. “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself” (Luke 23:36-37). And then Festus shouts out: “Are You the Messiah? Save Yourself … and save us!” (Luke 23:39).
“Save Yourself … and save us!” (Luke 23:39). The commentary writers and scholars all say that Festus was being crass and sarcastic. Again … it’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense to me .. and it makes no sense to the scholars either. As one commentator put it: “… faced with one’s death, you would think even if one had hope in his heart there was a real God, he would cry out in the hunger of his heart for mercy and grace” (Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Vol. V, p. 827. McLean, VA: Macdonald Publishing Co.). And so, the centuries-long attempt to reconcile this criminal’s sarcasm with his impending demise.
I think that Festus was dead serious for all the reasons we just heard. He was hanging on a cross. He was facing a long, slow, agonizing death. His shame and his death were on display for all the world to see … and he’s desperate … he’s clutching at air … grasping for anything … and I think what he shouts out is a desperate foxhole prayer: “Please … please … if there’s any chance that what they’re saying is true … if there’s any chance that the sign over your head is true … if there’s even the slightest chance that you’re the messiah … for God’s sakes, save yourself and save us!”
If you listened to the crowd and didn’t know anything that was going on, you might get the impression that this Jesus of Nazareth was a great man … or had claimed to be. You hear about Him saving others. If He could save others, why couldn’t He save Himself … save me? They chided Him to come down off the cross … where was that coming from? What did that mean? Did He really have the power, the ability, to do something like that? If He could tear down Temple and rebuild it in three days as he appears to have claimed … if He had that kind of power … well … help a fellow criminal out, right?
The verb that Luke uses to describe Festus’ chiding signifies that Festus’ wasn’t making a genuine request for help but was, in truth, joining with the on-lookers to mock and torment Jesus. The verb Luke used was “blasphemo” … sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it? It’s where we get our word “blaspheme” in English. It means to “demean … to denigrate, to malign, to slander, revile, or defame someone through speech.” Over time, “blasphemo” came to mean a certain kind of slanderous or demeaning speech. It describes speech that is irreverent, impious, disrespectful of or about God.
The point of Festus’ request was not to ask for help based on the belief that Jesus could really help him. It was intended to mock and ridicule the man who was nailed to the cross next to him. Imagine the nerve … the disrespect … of standing before a human judge who has videotape of you committing the crime, has 20 eye-witnesses, and you still demand that the judge let you go. Now imagine if the judge were God … who is accuser, witness, and judge all rolled into one. He sees and knows all of your crimes and yet you still stand there and demand mercy and absolution … that all charges be dropped. You show no guilt, no remorse, no shame for your behavior or your crimes … just the indescribable gall to demand a pardon.
You don’t walk into the Holy of Holies … into the very presence of God … and begin making demands, do you? No, Sir! You are in the presence of a holy and pure and righteous God. You come into the presence of God with fear … great fear … and with humility and great respect. You acknowledge your guilt, your failings, your short-comings, your unworthiness. You sacrifice and you pray that Yahweh doesn’t blast you into a trillion molecules, amen?
But that’s not who Festus or the religious leaders or the jeering crowd think is hanging on the cross, do they? In the minds of the religious leaders who convicted Jesus, He was just someone who was guilty of “blasphemo” … someone who was irreverent, impious, and disrespectful when He claimed to be the “Son of God.” Festus’ had no idea who Jesus was or what Jesus was guilty of and probably didn’t understand what the sign over Jesus’ head actually meant. For all he knew, Jesus was just another criminal like him.
But Demas seemed to know, didn’t he? “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation. If you did, you wouldn’t be speaking this way … and if you know what’s good for you, Festus, you’ll stop talking that way.”
How many of us are more like Festus than we are Demas? How may of us … Christians and non-Christians … will go about doing whatever we want, whenever, however we want … and the consequences be … well … you know … until it blows up in our faces. How may of us have made foxhole prayers just like Festus … caught red-handed with our hand in the proverbial cookie jar … and prayed: “God, get me out of this one and I swear, I’ll never do it again”?
Oh … am I the only one?
It seems to me that we only fear God … we only respect God … we only NEED God … when we’re in some sort of jam, amen? Once God answers our prayers and gets us out of our jam, we turn right around and do what? We grab another cookie, amen?
Oh … we’re grateful … at first. But there is no repentance … no change of heart … simply a human desire to avoid the consequences of our foolish, selfish, willful, disobedience … and that is not what the cross in the middle … the cross of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice … is all about, amen?
THIS is what the cross in the middle is all about! “We are justly punished, for we are getting what our deeds deserve but this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41).
The purpose of the cross … the purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice … is not to get us out of a jam … even though we were certainly in a jam. Its purpose was not to simply wipe the slate clean … though it does. It was to atone for our sin. The wages of sin is what? It’s death. And I, like Demas, like Festus, deserved the consequences of my sin. And I, like Demas, need to truly confess my wrongdoing … to admit and own my sin. Only then will I ever get but a glimpse of the height and length and depth and breadth of God’s love and mercy. The fact that my sins are forgiven and that I have a clean slate doesn’t mean that I am free to go and sin some more. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross didn’t buy me a “Get Out of Hell Free” card so that I can go back to doing what I want, how I want, whenever I want at no charge because Jesus picked up the tab.
There is no repentance without a change of heart … period! The very definition of “repentance” is a change of heart … a change of heart that leads to a change in our beliefs and a change in our actions, how we behave. The problem is that we are still trapped in the flesh … with all its temptations and desires. We struggle against the flesh … but that, my brothers and sisters, is a sign of our repentance, our change of heart. Before, we were like Festus … totally unaware of our depravity … our guilt. Without the pain of the truth … without the insight that comes from our conviction … why would we change? Festus doesn’t repent. Festus shows no sign of shame … only desperation and regret over having to face the consequences for his actions.
Demas, on the other hand, shows the first sign of repentance … “we are getting what we deserve for our deeds” (Luke 23:41). Demas is troubled by his sin … he is convicted by his sin … and he knows that he is deserving of the punishment that he is receiving at the hands of men … and the fate that awaits him when he stands before God on the day of divine judgment. Demas asks Festus if he fears God because he does … and with good reason.
And here’s the truly amazing thing about Demas’ confession. He asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes into His kingdom. Festus doesn’t repent … he only wants Jesus to get him out of his current … albeit dire … situation … asking Jesus to use His power to rescue him from the cross … but it is the cross … more accurately … Jesus’ death upon the cross … that will free us from the wages of sin, amen? If Jesus were to “save Himself” and step off of the cross, then our fate as sinners would have been sealed. Because He didn’t save Himself and step off of the cross, we have a chance, like Demas, to be pardoned before God, amen?
On the middle cross hung “Jesus of Nazareth” … but on that cross also hung the perfect sacrificial “Taleh Elohim” … the perfect sacrificial “Lamb” of God. The Hebrew word for “lamb” … “taleh” … is very interesting. “Taleh” literally means “covering.” That’s a funny name for animal, don’t you think … “covering” … “there goes a flock of ‘coverings’” … “look at that flock of ‘coverings’ in the field over there” … “Mary had a little ‘covering,’ its fleece was white as snow” … but it makes perfect sense when you stop and think about what a “lamb” or sheep represented to the people in Jesus’ day. The lamb or sheep’s wool was used to make what? Its hide or skin was used to make what? Yeah … “coverings” in the form of clothing and tents for shelter. At the same time, the lamb’s blood “covered” or protected the people from their sins. It was the blood of the “taleh” … the lamb … that “covered” the Hebrew slaves’ first born when the Angel of Death “passed over” Egypt. The sins of Israel were “taleh” … “covered” … and Israel was saved by the atoning blood of the lambs sacrificed at the Temple. Through His prophet, Isaiah, God told the people of Israel that a man … a servant of God … would become His “taleh” … His sacrificial lamb whose blood would cover the sins of the nation … and through His sacrifice we would find healing, forgiveness, and blessing. You will find God’s promise of the “Taleh” of God atoning for our sins in Isaiah 53.
The “taleh” … the lamb … was the life given to save and bless others … to cover our sins. And the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Lamb of God” … “Lamb” with a capital “L” … was the life given to save and bless us. From the very beginning, Jesus was the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei” in Greek … the Perfect Lamb of God … entirely pure … completely innocent … without blemish … without evil. The One … with a capital “O” … who would give His life to save those who were not innocent … like the two “kakourgai” … the two criminals hanging on the crosses next to His. He came and gave His life as a sacrifice to save your life and mine. The mystery … the beauty … the power of the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei” … is that God would give His life for us … for God is love … pure, perfect love without blemish, without evil … and the nature of love is to give of itself. The “taleh” … the lamb sacrificed on the cross that day … was God.
But here is where I’m going to step out of the established box a bit. Does Demas know all this? That the man hanging on the cross next to his was the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei” … the Perfect Lamb of God being sacrificed for his sins? Listen closely to what he said. He asked Festus, “Do you not fear God?” (Luke 23:40). That doesn’t mean that Demas see “Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews” as a god or “THE” God of Israel. He is, however, acknowledging that God … not Jesus … has seen what he and Festus … and this guy on the middle cross … have done and has brought them to justice. “We are being punished justly, for we are getting what we deserve” (Luke 23:40). But does he see the man hanging on the middle cross as the “Taleh Elohim” … as the “Perfect Lamb of God” … who has come to take away his sins … to atone for the sins of the nation of Israel … to take the sins of the world upon Himself and bury them with Him in the grave? He never once calls Jesus “God” or “Lord” or “Savior.” In fact, what does he call Jesus? He calls Him “this man” in verse 41 … “this man has done nothing wrong” … and in verse 42 he calls the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei” … simply “Yeshua” … a common Hebrew name that means “to deliver, save, or rescue.” Naming someone “Yeshua” no more makes them the “Taleh Elohim” or “Agnes Dei” than naming someone “Lucky” makes them lucky, amen?
As Demas points out, God has seen what he and Festus have done and has brought them to justice. “We are punished justly, for we are getting what we deserve” (Luke 23:41). He goes on to say that he believes that Jesus is innocent but does he see the man hanging on the middle cross as the “Taleh Elohim” … the Perfect Lamb of God who has come to take away not only his sins but the sins of the world? I don’t think so.
As so many expected, the messiah was to be a man … a human descendent of the line of David … a prophet … an anointed king … human … divinely appointed … but not divine himself. Perhaps Demas knew the promises of Isaiah 53 … although Luke never tells us whether Festus or Demas are Jewish or Greek or Roman … but if Demas were Jewish and knew of God’s promises in Isaiah 53, there was nothing in Isaiah 53 to indicate that the Lamb of God would be divine. From Demas’ point of view, Jesus was or appeared to be an innocent man … and we don’t even know what he based that on. Intuition? Perhaps. Or may Jesus didn’t act or look like the kind of rough, dangerous characters … the “kakourgai” … that he and Festus hung out with. The most that Demas and Festus knew about Jesus … or we assume that they knew about Jesus … was that Jesus was being mocked and executed for the crime of “blasphemo” … for claiming that He was a king when clearly He was not.
In the minds of people like Demas and Festus, guilty people go to Hell and eternal torment or they exist forever in the shadowy realm of Hades … depending on whether they were Jewish or Roman. But an innocent man … they went somewhere else … a place of eternal bliss and happiness … some place special … some place close to God … and Demas, who believes that Jesus is innocent, also believes that Jesus isn’t headed for the same eternal fate that he and Festus are … and so he asks Jesus to put in a good word for him with God. “Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). “Jesus … remember me.” He speaks to Jesus as a friend with whom he has shared an epic and tragic moment … and I can hardly think of anything more epic or tragic than slowly dying on a cross while people stand around watching you and mocking you as you die, can you?
Maybe Demas has a mustard seed of faith. What if the things that the crowd are shouting about Jesus are true … that He saved others? That maybe He could save Himself and save him? What if this Jesus is the “Messiah of God, His chosen one” (Luke 23:35). While it was painfully clear to Demas that this Jesus fella wasn’t going to be inheriting a kingdom here … well … if Jesus were the Messiah maybe God would give Him a kingdom somewhere … somehow. His faith reminds me of Abraham’s faith as he led Isaac up the side of Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him … confident that God could and would make it all work out … somehow … that God would somehow provide a lamb for the burnt offering instead of his son.
Demas doesn’t realize how close to the truth he really is. Jesus … the “Taleh Elohim” … tells Demas: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) … “Paradise” with a capital “P.” “Today, Demas, you will be with me in my kingdom, which is a paradise beyond anything you could ever imagine.”
The word “paradise” is a Persian word that means “walled garden.” As the name or word “paradise” suggests, it describes a garden that is protected by a wall. The only people who are allowed into the garden are the ones who own it or the people that the owner allow to enter it and enjoy its delights. When a Persian king wished to honor one of his guests, he would invite them to spend time with him talking and relaxing and perhaps eating with him in his “paradise.” Hanging on the cross, Jesus invites Demas to walk with Him and talk with Him and relax and enjoy the delights of His Garden forever.
What an answer to Dema’s prayer, amen? “I will not only remember you,” Jesus promises him, “I will not only put in a good word for you when I get to my kingdom … but you will be an honored guest in the courts of Heaven.”
I don’t think the impact of Jesus’ promise will hit him until he, a “kakourgos” … a brigand … a thief … a justly convicted highwayman finds himself standing in a garden with the crystal-clear water of life running through the middle of it … the Tree of Life lining both sides of the river … and he realizes that he is standing in the Paradise … the Garden … of the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei.”
Sounds beautiful doesn’t it? What’s better than imagining Demas in the Garden with the “Telah Elohim”? Imagining YOU in Paradise … in the Garden of the Lord. And if you think it’s beautiful thinking about it and picturing it in your mind, imagine what it’s going to be like when we’re actually there. I don’t think we can imagine it, can you?
The cross is Jesus’ invitation for us to join Him in Paradise. This is, in fact, the very heart and soul of the Good News … God wants to be with us and He wants us to be with Him! Jesus … Emmanuel … the Telah Elohim … Agnus Dei … came to us so that we could be with Him.
In the original Paradise … the Garden of Eden … God created human beings to not only tend His Garden but to enjoy fellowship with Him. His goal then is the same goal that he has to day … to be with us and for us to be with Him … and Jesus … God with Us … came to make that happen. “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). “I can make this promise to you, Demas, because right now, as I hang on the this cross and am about to give up my life, my spirit, I am making that possible for you … and for all who believe in me and want to be with me and the first one to join me when I get back to my home in Heaven with the Father will be you, Demas … a ‘kakourgos.’”
Wow! If that doesn’t excite your heart and soul … well, I don’t know what will … because what happened to Demas that day will happen for all of us … for every Demas here in this sanctuary. The LORD wants nothing more than to walk with us again in the cool of the day like he used to do with Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden. Jesus so loved the world and everyone in it … even Demas … that He came and died on the cross. And Jesus loves you so much and wants to be with you so much that He came and died on the cross to make that happen.
This would be so awesome if we stopped right here, amen? But, believe it not, it gets better … so, so much better! Right at that moment … right at that split second … that pivotal moment in history … Demas became a person without a past. People with pasts cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven and walk in a pure and perfect Paradise with a pure and perfect God … but Demas can … and we can … because the blood of the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Agnus Dei” … has covered our sin … wiped us clean … made our heart and souls as white as snow. Right at that moment, Demas became a new creation in Christ while hanging on the cross. At that exact moment, he became a man without a past. “I, even I,” says God, “am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remember your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25).
At the moment, when Christ cried out “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” and breathed His last (Luke 23:46), we, along with Demas, became men and women without a past and we became men and women with a future … a future with God in His Kingdom, His Paradise. As the karkourgos Demas proves, you only need a mustard seed of faith.
Praise God … and thank You, Jesus, amen?
Both Demas and Festus’ actions led them to where they were at that moment … hanging on crosses … one of them unwilling to let the past go even though death was staring him square in the face. Festus was desperate to get out of his consequences, to get off the cross, but he wasn’t willing to give up his old ways. He wasn’t ready for God to change his heart.
Demas, on the other hand, knew that he had a past but was willing to believe that Jesus was capable of giving him a future. And the moment that he prayed, “Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom,” that was the moment … the split second … that he became a man without a past and became a man with only a future … a future with God.
How about you? Are you a person with a past? Would you like to start over and become a person without a past? Would you like to become a person who looks forward to the future with hope? If not … or you’re not sure … you can do like Demas right now and confess: “Lord, I have been condemned justly” … and then let go of your past completely and accept a future with God that was made possible because of the blood of the “Taleh Elohim” … the Lamb of God … that covers your sins.
I want to close by sharing an experience that happened to Harry Ironside … a wonderful preacher and Bible teacher from a bygone generation. In his book, “Random Reminiscences,” Rev. Ironside describes a personal encounter that he had with a famous atheist that I think will demonstrate the difference between a Demas and a Festus.
He was walking through San Francisco one Sunday morning when he happened to pass by a group of Salvation Army workers holding an open-air meeting on a street corner. There were probably 60 of them. When they saw him, they recognized him and asked him if he could take a few moments to share his testimony with them. Always willing to share what God had done for him, he gave his testimony about how God had saved him and brought him back into a relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ.
As he was speaking, he noticed a well-dressed man on the edge of the crowd. When Ironside finished speaking, this man came up to him and handed him his business card. On one side was the man’s name … on the other side was a hand-written invitation to come debate him on the question of agnosticism versus Christianity next Sunday at the Academy of Science Hall. The well-dressed man was a well-know socialist and agnostic who had written a number of books attacking Christianity.
I love Ironside’s response:
“Sir, I will only come on one condition … and that condition is that you bring with you two people next Sunday whose lives have been totally transformed through agnosticism. I want you to find a man who was a down-and-outer … anyway you want to consider it … a criminal of any kind who came to hear you speak and having heard you speak about agnosticism, turned himself around and his life has been totally transformed.
“Then I want you to find a woman … a woman of ill-repute or of any other kind of social sin you can imagine … and she came to one of your lectures on agnosticism and her life was transformed and she was made clean from the inside out.
“If you will bring two, I will bring 100 people with me who have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ whose lives have been transformed.”
Then he turned to the Salvation Army captain and asked her: “Do you think that you might have some that you think that you can contribute?”
Smiling, she replied: “Sir, I have at least 40 who will stand to their feet and testify that Jesus Christ has changed their lives.”
Needless to say, the agnostic couldn’t meet Ironside’s challenge.
Only God can change a heart … even the heart of a kakourgos like Demas … and if you think that your past can’t be forgiven, you are 100 percent wrong, wrong, wrong! Demas’ experience on the cross next to Jesus proves that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what your relationships are … the wonderful mercy and forgiveness of Jesus … the “Taleh Elohim” … is enough to surround you with so much grace and love that your sin will be covered up and obliterated forever!
God loves to take the brokenness of our lives and breathe His wonderful Power on us and make us new. Don’t wait until the last second to do what Demas did. Invite the “Taleh Elohim” … the “Angus Dei” … into your heart right now and let Him begin the transformation process right here … right now. The Perfect Lamb of God can and will make you into a new creation by the power of His blood and He will do this because He wants to be with you in your heart and in your life in the here and now … and He wants you to be with Him in Paradise forever and ever.
Only God can change a heart … and He wants to change your heart if you will let Him. Do you believe that? Then repeat after me: “God … come and change my heart. Amen.”
Believe or not, that’s the shortest closing prayer that I have ever prayed.
