Is That Your Final Answer?
Luke 23:32-43
I am amazed at what becomes popular in our culture sometimes. ABC’s game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" became a huge hit about a year and a half ago. Regis Philbin is now a household name. Phrases like, "Is that your final answer?" have become globally popular and even a smart mouthed response to almost any request.
- Do you want french fries or onion rings with that? Is that your final answer?
- Or a parent? Where have you been since school? - Is that your final answer?
- Even at weddings - "Do you take _________" - Is that your final answer?
There is a genius behind that repetitive question. It is that it acknowledges everyone’s desperate need to know they can still get another chance. "Is that your final answer" gives everyone some "fudge room." On the game show, it gives the contestant another chance to reconsider their answer or to get the response of the audience, listening for groans or cheers. The show even offers second chances through "lifelines." Call a friend, poll the audience or get the computer’s 50-50. And finally, you can even bail out all together and take the money you’ve won and run.
There are times in life when we hear, perhaps more subtly, "Is that your final answer". It comes from God, who so desperately wants us to choose life - eternal life with Him. He gives second chances. In fact, you could call Him the God of the second chance. After all, that’s what grace is, a second chance, a free gift - a guaranteed lifeline!
Life is full of choices. Once upon a time there was a court jester who had served the Caliph at Baghdad and his court, keeping them amused whenever they called on him. One day in a moment of thoughtlessness, he offended the Caliph. For his mistake the Caliph ordered that he be put to death. "However," said the ruler, "in consideration of your many years of service, I will let you decide how you will die." "Well," replied the jester, "if it’s all the same to you, O most gracious Caliph, I choose death by old age."
You don’t get to choose how you die usually, but you do get to choose how you live. You and I are the sum total of the choices we make. Hour after hour, day after day, you make choices, big ones, little ones, tough ones, easy ones, liberating ones, confining ones, selfish ones, selfless ones. At the end of the day, you add up those choices and This Is Your Life, as the old tv show put it.
- Deuteronomy 30:19,20 - "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your desencdants might live! Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey Him and commit yourself to Him for He is you life."
- But with every choice we make we need to listen to that divine, distinctive whisper asking us, "Is that your final answer?" Are we choosing life with God with our choices?
As we near Easter Sunday, passion week, I want us to visit a text that deals with choices. It is Luke 23:32-43. - read
Calvary, Golgotha, the place of the skull, the place of the three crosses. One cross stands out to us 2,000 years later - the center one. But on that day, people saw three crosses. Executions were a public event. Kind of like reality tv today, people couldn’t’ seem to help themselves. They had to watch, distasteful as it was. Three anguished bodies hung there that day. One was our holy Savior, Jesus. He was innocent. He was there because it was God’s plan from the foundation of the world. Jesus was there willingly. But the other two were criminals. One on each side of Jesus. Those three crosses have been called by three different names.
- The cross of redemption
- The cross of rebellion
- The cross of repentance
It is a scene of choices - of one more chance for a final answer - one more chance for a lifeline. Even there dying on crosses, the two criminals had choices. For what you say? For what they would do with this Jesus who was dying on a cross too. Even when the sum of their live’s choices had led them to die a criminal’s death, they still had a choice left.
I. The Cross of Rebellion
The one criminal died on a cross of rebellion. He chose to spend his last moments mocking Jesus "So, you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself - and us, too, while you’re at it!"
Apparently he was unremorseful even at death’s door. With one foot in the grave, he stubbornly refused to plead for mercy from the One could and would so willingly give it - who wanted so desperately to give it - the One who even at that moment was dying so that this criminal could have mercy simply for the asking.
"Nobody tells me how to live my life. I answer to no one. I need no one’s mercy!"
- I am always amazed at the stubbornness of people like this. Timothy McVeigh strikes me this way. He was caught. He is guilty. He does not deny his crime. He will die soon. But there is no evident remorse, no repentance. I would expect a plea for mercy, if not from the courts, certainly from God. But there is none.
- I showed a clip of a movie to the youth group a few weeks ago. It is from the movie "Dead Man Walking." He was a lot like Timothy Mcveigh in his stubbornness, his hatred. But a nun became his spiritual adviser on death row. She helped him to see God’s offer of mercy, and on the day of his death he broke down in repentance and accepted God’s offer of mercy. It is a touching scene, and it is one that I expect from everyone. But it is not so.
To all who choose rebellion as their final answer, Jesus says this:
- John 8:24 - "unless you believe that I am who I say I am, you will die in your sins."
- Luke 13:3 - "You will also perish unless you turn from your evil ways and turn to God."
Is that your final answer?
II. The Cross of Repentance
The second criminal deserved to be there just like the other man, but his final answer was different. It seems that something dawned on this man as he hung on a cross. He sensed that he was witnessing something that was not of this earth happening next to himself. Perhaps he was somewhat familiar with this Jesus and the news that surrounded Him over the past few years.
"But the other criminal protested, ‘Don’t you fear God even when you are dying? We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.’"
I find it interesting that even this thief began to mock Jesus but then changed his heart and mind. In Mark 15:32, it says that both criminals ridiculed Him. Matthew 27:44 tells us they both hurled the same insults at Jesus. But only Mark adds that this one criminal decided this was not to be his final answer. He repented. He pleaded for mercy.
He saw Jesus dying. But as Jesus had been so unjustly sentenced, so unjustly mocked and beaten, this criminal heard Jesus say, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." He sensed that Jesus was not just a man, He was the Son of God. He sensed that if Jesus would forgive even those who put Him on this cross, that maybe Jesus would forgive me too. And he was right.
Psalm 51:17 - "The sacrifice You want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, O God, You will not despise."
Hymn - "the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives." No one is too far gone for salvation if they will just put their trust in God’s mercy in Jesus. God is just waiting for you to choose Him, to make Him your final answer.
III. The Cross of Redemption
"And Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, today you will be with Me in paradise.’"
Even to this criminal, guilty, and mocking Jesus up to the last minute, there was mercy, forgiveness and eternal life - because his final answer was to trust Jesus to do for him what he could not do for himself.
I am saddened when I see someone who can’t stand that another has received mercy. In that film, "Dead Man Walking," that was the role of the parents of one of the victims of the man on death row. They despised the nun for guiding the criminal to appeal to God for mercy. "He doesn’t deserve mercy!" They are right. But neither do they and neither do I.
We are all sinners. I hope that political correctness never gets ahold of the song "Amazing Grace." Those words, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me," are true. Those words from the song, "At The Cross," which say "for such a worm as I" did get changed. Check it out - number 188 in your hymnbook now reads "for sinners such as I." Such words may not be very popular today, but they are true. Jesus came to redeem us from the guilt and the power of sin that make us wretched, separated from the holy God.
Jesus’ cross was a cross of redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation to God. Jesus’ cross gives us hope and assurance. Strange but true. How can we find hope and assurance in a God that dies? That is the feeling of many, like the other thief on the cross. "You can’t be a Savior, you can’t even save yourself." But the cross offers hope and assurance because the cross wasn’t God’s final answer - the empty tomb was. Christ arose. His death was not final. His death was a sacrifice for sin - for you and I.
John 10:17,18 - "I lay down My life that I may have it back again. No one can take My life from Me. I lay down my life voluntarily. For I have the right to lay it down when I want to and also the power to take it again. For My Father has given Me this command."
1 Corinthians 5:1-21 - "For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. This is the wonderful message He has given us to tell others. We are Christ’s ambassadors, and God is using us to speak to you. We urge you, as though Christ Himself were here pleading with you, ‘Be reconciled to God!’ For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ."
The cross is not evidence of a weak God but of a strong and powerful God and yet a God who is humble and merciful.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 - "I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God. As the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas.’ So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never find Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save all who believe. God’s way seems foolish to the Jews because they want a sign from heaven to prove it is true. And it is foolish to the Greeks because they believe only what agrees with their own wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended, and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the mighty power of God and the wonderful wisdom of God."
How do you see the cross? An ancient cartoon has been found on a wall in the ruins of ancient Rome showing how crazy the Christian message of salvation in the cross seemed to many people at that time. It’s a caricature of Jesus’ crucifixion, showing a man’s body hanging on a cross - but the body has the head of a donkey. There’s also a figure of a young man with hands raised in worship to Him. Underneath is this inscription "He worships His God."
A crucified God? It makes no sense - so many say. But it is the power of God displayed. How do you see it. What’s your final answer?
Hebrews 9:27 says, "it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgement."
The world’s wisdom says there must be another chance after that - reincarnation, heaven for everyone, something. God says, I give you a second chance in Jesus - a guaranteed lifeline - but you must take it now. What’s your final answer?
