Words From The Cross: "today Paradise Is Yours"

In Jesus Holy Name March 5, 2023

Lent II Luke 23:43 Redeemer

“Words from the Cross” “Today you will be with me in paradise”

Friday afternoon. It’s another hot day in Jerusalem. Things are worse now. More blood. More screams. The insects swarm around the three naked bodies. There are shouts, restless words from the crowd. Several hundred people have gathered at Golgotha to watch the end. Three men will die.

It hasn’t been an ordinary day. Not that you could ever call crucifixion ordinary. But the Romans did it all the time. It was their favored method for dealing with criminals and troublemakers. There were plenty of easier ways to kill people—and the Romans knew all about those ways, too—but crucifixion had its advantage. The primary one being that crucifixion was such a gruesome spectacle that it caught the public attention.

They were crucifying three men on the eve of the Jewish Passover. That meant the city would be clogged with religious pilgrims. The message would come through loud and clear—Don’t mess with us.

Things had started well enough. The three men were crucified at 9 A.M.—the normal starting time. The crowd was larger than usual, mostly because of the man in the middle, one Jesus of Nazareth. The hard part was nailing the men to the cross. At best it was a bloody ordeal. If the victims struggled (and most of them did),. But the man in the middle had not struggled at all. He looked half-dead before they laid him on the cross. The scourging must have taken a lot out of him.

Suddenly, at noon, everything went dark. The sun disappeared—just like that—and thick darkness settled over the land. It was the darkness of a cave in the middle of the night, thick, ugly darkness that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. (notes from May 2014, Ray Pritchard Sermon: Last Minute Salvation)

It lasted for three hours.

Jesus of Nazareth hangs in the middle of three crosses. Two men were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left.

Who were they? Thieves, robbers,.” “members of the criminal class, professional criminals. Maybe they were companions of Barabbas, political revolutionaries bent on overthrowing the yoke of Roman rule.

We do not know their names or their hometowns. Both had been severely beaten before they were crucified, both were covered with blood and dirt. Both men were dying and both would soon be dead. No one could look at them and tell any difference.

But in reality, no two men could be more different. These two men who were crucified on the outer crosses differed on one main point: they saw the man in the middle differently and therefore asked him for different things.

One man wanted escape, not forgiveness. If you are the Messiah…save yourself and us. The other man wanted forgiveness, not escape. One makes a final plea to the Judge of the Universe. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus is hanging next to him, Every movement is agony, every breath torture.

Beneath him the mob shout insults. They jeer, they hiss, they curse, the spit,. It is brutal and inhuman. Yet it is here—at the cross in the midst of death—that this one thief comes to faith in the man in the middle, whose name is Jesus.

Somehow this thief being saw Jesus being crucified as was he and still he believed in him, as the promised Messiah. He is a crucified sinner trusting in a crucified Savior. this man saw him as he really was, the Son of God.

As far as we can tell, he never heard Jesus teaching by the seashore, he never saw Jesus heal the sick or raise the dead, he knew nothing of Jesus’ great parables and never saw any of his miracles.

He evidently knew nothing of the virgin birth, the Old Testament prophecies, the conversation with Nicodemus or the raising of Lazarus just one week earlier. The coming miracle of the resurrection was unknown to him. All the things we take for granted, he knew nothing about.

Yet there on the cross, he came to understand the heart of the gospel. In the crucified Jesus, beaten, mocked, forsaken this thief saw a king and another crown rather than the crown of thorns. One crucified man saw another crucified man and believed in him.

That made the difference between heaven and hell.

What about the prayer of the thief? It is a bit unusual. But it reminds us that God judges the sincerity of our hearts and not the accuracy of our words.

Likewise this dying thief didn’t know all the right words. This thief on the cross was dying for his sins—a guilty man justly punished. He cried out to Jesus and at the very last second he was saved.