Sermon 10
THE THIEF ON THE CROSS (Luke 23:39-43)
This is the story of a man we know was saved. We know it on the authority of Jesus. By “saved” the Bible means that he was cleansed of His sins which were many were all washed away. In the moment he trusted Christ he was forgiven.
By saved the Bible means he was changed. He was born again. In the moment he trusted Christ he was changed on the inside, and had he lived, people would have seen the change on the outside.
By saved the Bible means he was given the right to go to heaven. There is a hell to miss and a heaven to make and this man made heaven. If ever anyone deserved hell it was this thief who died with Jesus. When our Lord was hung upon the cross He was not even allowed to die in peace. The howling, hissing mob like snakes hurled their venom in His face. They mocked His prayers (Mt. 27:49). They turned up their noses at Him (Mt. 27:39). They taunted Him to save Himself if He was the Messiah (Mt. 27:42). It seems that the two thieves who died with Him would have taken His side. But no! Matthew tells us, “The thieves (plural, both of them) hurled the same thing in His teeth” (Mt. 27:44). These who suffered with Him added to his sufferings. I repeat. If any group deserved hell it was this mob at the foot of the cross and in this mob the worst of them were these two thieves who showed no compassion for a fellow sufferer.
This man, who deserved hell, received heaven. That morning, when the sun rose, he was a child of Satan. That night he was a child of God. That morning he hurled insults in the Son of God’s face. That night he sang praises to His name. The hymn says it well:
There is a fountain filled with blood / Drawn from Emanuel’s veins / And sinners plunged beneath that flood / Lose all their guilty stains / The dying thief rejoiced to see / That fountain in his day / And there may I though vile as he / Wash all my sins away.
This dying thief, better than anyone else in the Word of God, shows us how to be saved. God has His unique avenue of approach to every human heart and the circumstances of our conversions will differ. But there are some common elements in every conversion. There are some essentials in salvation and this thief shows them to us. From the king on the throne to the pauper in the street we must find God the way this man found Him.
I. WHAT HE KNEW
Look first at what he knew. It is the truth that sets us free and truth, to change our lives, enters through the mind.
1. He Knew He Was a Sinner. When his friend taunted Jesus he said, “We are punished justly. We are getting what our deeds deserve” (23:41). He did not blame society or his parents or God. He blamed himself. He acknowledged that he was a sinner.You say, “Everyone knows that and will admit it!” I answer that few people really know it and even fewer admit it from the heart. When you talk with people about their relationship with God, they will say something like this - “Yeah, preacher, I know I’m not what I ought to be. No one is.” This is true but this mild admission does not come within a million miles of evangelical repentance and conviction born of the Holy Spirit where we see ourselves as guilty in the eyes of a holy God. Isaiah saw God high and lifted up and said, “Woe is me, for I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa. 6). Peter saw the Divine Jesus catch fish with a word of command and said, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk. 5:8). I agree with the old time preacher who said the hardest thing about getting people saved is getting them lost. Spurgeon said getting people saved is getting them lost. Spurgeon said we must come to God begging for mercy with the noose around our necks. He knew he was a sinner. He knew second
: 2. He Knew He was Going to Die. was going to die. When the Romans sentenced you to death, you died. No savior on a white horse rode over the hill to your rescue. Nailed to a cross by the power of Rome this man knew he was going to step into eternity. Illustration: A little boy’s grandfather died and in the hall outside the hospital room his pastor tried to comfort him. He said, “Tommy, your grandfather has gone to heaven.” The little boy, brushing back the tears, said, “How far is heaven?” The pastor told the boy to put his hand on his heart and then asked him what he felt. When the little boy said, “I feel my heart beating,” the pastor said, “That’s how far heaven is. It’s one heartbeat away.” Do you know that you are guilty in the eyes of a holy God? Do you know that right now you are one heartbeat from heaven or hell. If you do then you can be saved, if you believe something else this thief believed.
3, He Knew He Could Do Nothing to Save Himself. His hands and feet were nailed to a cross. He could not be baptized. He could not join a church. He could not read a Bible. He could not witness for Jehovah. He could not lift a hand or a foot toward his salvation. All he could do was cry out for mercy from the Son of God. A lot of church members need to know this. Working up a righteousness of their own they do not believe with Paul that., “By the works of the law will no living person be justified” (Rom. 3:28). Suppose you stood before God and he told you that you were not going to heaven; what would you say? Would you say, “Lord, you are mistaken. I taught a Sunday School class...I preached the Gospel...I served as a foreign missionary...I tried to live a good life...etc.”?
If Jesus said that to me I would turn and walk to hell and I would tell Jesus that he lied, because I had put my trust in Him. I believed He was the divine Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I believed that all who labor and are heavy laden could come to Him. I trusted in His death to pay for my sins. I trusted in His risen life to give me the new birth and live inside of me. Trusting in Jesus, the only way we can be lost is for Jesus to be a fraud and a liar. And this can never be! He is who He says is, and praise God, He does what He says He will do.
Illustration: John Wesley was a missionary to Georgia in the 1700’s, but on the ship going back to England, he wrote, “I came to convert the Indians, but who will convert me?” God did a few weeks later, when in a little chapel he cast himself by faith at the feet of Christ and cried for mercy. Do you realize that nothing you do can save you? Then you can be saved if you believe something else the thief believed.
He believed, next, that Jesus Christ had the power to save. In the providence of God, the filthy Pharisees who hounded Jesus all the way to the cross they said, “He saved others, let Him save Himself” (Lk. 23:35). What a gospel message - He saved others! Spurgeon said, “I could swim to heaven on that plank.”
Look around you. Look up and down the pews of any church. You will find the two-faced and the hypocritical. We know that. But you will also find the salt of the earth. You will find those twice born champions who have been delivered from alcohol and greed and hate the love of money and a thousand other sins by the grace and power of Jesus Christ.
Dear friends, stop hiding behind hypocrites. You find them everywhere. Look at genuine Christians cleansed and changed by Christ. There was a member of my family who was an ardent churchgoer. He held positions in the church. He never allowed a meal to be eaten without prayer. But he was also cruel and unkind. As a little boy, not growing up in a Christian home, I watched him go to teach Sunday School with a Bible in one pocket and a bottle of whiskey in the other. I felt the lash of his tongue and the back of his hand. And he was the only Christian in my family.
When I walked the aisle and accepted Christ that relative was on my mind. My prayer was, “Oh God, I don’t want to be like him. I want to be a real Christian. I want to be like Jesus.” I thought of many fine, kind, helpful, humble Christians and said, “Oh Lord, make me like them.” I knew He could save others. They had loved me and welcomed me and helped me and above all showed me the saving power of Jesus in human lives. I had heard the song for years and suddenly I knew its meaning: “ It is no secret what God can do, what He’s done for others, He’ll do for you.”
4. He Knew Jesus Would Save.
As they were crucifying him, Jesus kept saying, “Father forgive them!” At some point in that horrible scene, the Holy Spirit told this man, Jesus included him in that prayer. He had sneered at Jesus with all the rest, but that prayer was for all those rotten people that day, and as unbelievable as it sounded, he believed it and begged for mercy. The tragic thing is that so many know all this and still are not saved. They miss heaven by eighteen inches - the distance between their head and their hearts. What we know in our heads must move into our hearts and lives. We see what this man knew, look now at ...
B. WHAT HE DID
1. He Turned To Jesus. He did not turn to religion. It was religion and religious men who nailed Jesus to the cross. He did not turn to self righteousness, for knowing his heart, he knew he had none to offer. He did not turn to people, because people cannot forgive what we have done to ourselves and God. He turned to Jesus. In other words, he repented. Repentance is an “about face.” We turn from sin to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and no one who turns to Jesus is turned away.
2. He Trusted Jesus. He said, “Lord, remember me when you come in your Kingdom” (v. 42). He believed that Jesus was the King of heaven, the Messiah, and that this King loved him enough to forgive him. He lifted Jesus up to the throne of the universe, but brought him down to the need and desperation and hurt in his heart.You say it was easy for him to believe. He could see Jesus and talk with Him face to face. I say the opposite. I say it was hard for him to believe. I say this was perhaps the greatest act of faith in the Bible. Think about what he saw. He saw a battered, bruised and bleeding man who apparently could not even save Himself and he believed He was the king of heaven. The only crown He wore was the crown of thorns. The only throne He had was the old rugged cross. The only robe He had was gambled away at His feet. And this man believed He was a king. 3
. He Prayed to Jesus. This is faith on its feet. We are not saved by faith or repentance or prayer or anything else we do. We are saved by Jesus Christ through faith which expresses itself in the sinner’s prayer to forgive. We must give Jesus our lives to change and our sins to forgive. And we do this through prayer. Remember the Publican in Jesus’ parable. Kneeling next to a proud Pharisee he cried, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), and Jesus said he went home justified (saved).
Illustration: I remember when I came to God. I made up my mind when I heard Tennessee Ernie Ford sing, “Lord, I’m Coming Home.” I went home and knelt by my bed and said, “Lord, I am filthy from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. But I believe you love me and will forgive me and change me and I give myself to You.” In that instant I became a child of God. I did it. This thief did it. You can do it. “The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives.”
He seized the moment when it came We can learn the wrong lesson from this man’s salvation. This is the classic example of death-bed repentance. At the very door to hell he found heaven. And a lot of people may be putting off deciding for Christ in the hopes of doing it before they die. This hope leans upon a rotten crutch. It is the hope of fools. This is the only example of death-bed salvation in the Bible and wise Matthew Henry says, “There is one so men might not despair...There is only one so men might not presume.” In a split second our seven brave astronauts were blown into eternity to face God. Your death can be just as swift. Most people die under heavy sedation in hospitals. Perhaps you will not be mentally able to decide in this area. But, most of all, you may not want to turn to Christ, even in the face of death.
You see, we do not decide when and where we are saved. We respond, or refuse to respond, to the call of God. We are drawn to Jesus by the Father (Jn 6:44). We are convicted of sin by the Spirit (Jn. 16:8-10). And if we put off these drawings and these convictions we can harden our hearts (Heb. 3:8) to the point that they mean nothing to us. I have seen many lost people go into eternity stubbornly refusing to receive the love of Christ because they hardened their hearts through the years. This man was cleansed. All of his sins were forgiven (Rom. 4:7-8). He was also changed because Jesus tells that to see the Kingdom of heaven we must be born again (Jn. 3). Had he lived he would have served God. Like us, he would fail and fall and serve imperfectly, but he would have served. And he was given the right to go to heaven
