Reconciled by the Cross - Luke 23 Vs 39-49

Morning, everyone.

Hopefully we're all doing well today on this blessed Sunday.

Before we begin with worship and prayer, I'll go over a few announcements that we have.

So today at 6 o 'clock, we'll have a prayer meeting tonight in the Fellowship Hall.

And then later on this week, we have a continuation of our Bible study of which pastors going over the book of Titus.

And that'll start or continue this Wednesday, December 4th at 530.

You can join us in person or online.

Both options are available.

We'd love to have you there.

And then we have Ladies Christmas Brunch this Saturday at 10 a .m. for those who are interested or ladies

only.

But yeah, there'll be food there.

So feel free to come.

And then we also have Missionary of the Month with Darci Berlang.

She works with the Ethnos 360 in Indonesia as a Bible translator.

So just pray for her health and her ministry as well, as well as those who are

also impacted by the ministry that they'll also be saved by it as well.

And then lastly, we have Baptism Sunday coming on December 29th.

For those who are interested, just let any of the elders or pastors know.

We'll be happy to have in -person baptism here.

So yeah, that'll conclude announcements for this week.

If you'll just join me in prayer before we begin in worship and sermon.

Dear Lord, thank you for this day given us.

Thank you for all your many blessings, Lord.

Thank you for allowing us to be here to fellowship in your name, Lord.

Before we enter into worship and prayer or in worship and sermon, just prepare our hearts,

Lord, so that we're able to give ourselves fully to you, Lord, during this time, so that we can better

understand your character and how you want us to be in our lives, Lord.

In your name we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

So our first song is going to be one that you're all very familiar with, and that's Joy to the World.

And I think I had mentioned before that it's really written originally about the second coming of Christ.

But I was reading this week, this song is all about the fulfillment of what Christ came to do in the

first place.

Christmas is not only a time to look back at the grace accomplished in the past.

Christmas is also a time to look forward to the grace that was accomplished for our future.

When we sing these words, we are proclaiming the ultimate joy to be revealed.

This is why we can sing Joy to the World at Christmas.

So let's stand together and sing Joy to the World.

Our next song is Come, Thou Long -Expected Jesus.

And this was written by Charles Wesley a couple hundred years ago.

But it's still relevant today.

And it talks about anticipating the coming of Christ.

And it's just got good theology.

So let's sing this song together.

Scripture is going to be on Ephesians 2, verses 1 -10.

Ephesians 2, verses 1 -10.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course

of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now

working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging

the desires of flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,

even as the rest.

But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he

loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive

together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him

in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of

his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his worksmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

This is the word of the Lord.

So our next song, Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery.

This is new to us.

We sang this last week and I think it was new to most everyone, myself for sure.

But it's a beautiful song and I love the words and the meaning.

So let's stand together as we sing Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery.

Luke chapter 23 verses 39 through 49.

Luke chapter 23 verses 39

through 49.

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed him saying, If you are the Christ, save yourself and

us.

But the other answering rebuked him saying, Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same

condemnation?

And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing

wrong.

And he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus said to him, Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.

Now it was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

Then the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was torn in two.

And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I

commit my spirit.

Having said this, he breathed his last.

So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a

righteous man.

And the whole crowd who came together to that site, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and

returned.

But all his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these

things.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray.

Father, we are grateful for what Jesus had done for us on the cross.

Thank you that he took on the divine judgment that we deserved so that we may be

forgiven and found righteous in him.

Help us to receive him through faith alone.

Help us to receive him because he is a free gift from you.

And help us to remember him today.

In Jesus name.

Amen.

So as we enter into the Advent season, we will see

Christmas decorations, Christmas artifacts everywhere.

From the music on the radio to the holiday sale at your nearest retail store.

However, if Santa and the elves are what takes the center stage

during Christmas, we have missed the meaning of Christmas.

If gifts and family are under the spotlight of Christmas, we have also missed

the significance of Christmas.

Ultimately, Christmas is worthy of celebration because of the name

Christmas.

It's because of Christ.

It is unfortunate to call some of these winter songs Christmas songs when they're only about sleigh bells

and snowmen.

And they have nothing to do with Christ.

They may be great songs, but they're not about Christmas.

Although we celebrate Christ's birth on Christmas, we must also look ahead to the

cross.

And in the end, his incarnation, him

becoming a man, is crucial because

what he has come to do, which is to die on the cross.

The cross that he came to bear for our sake.

And really the best gift of Christmas is Christ himself.

Because he bore the punishment that we deserved and rose from the dead.

And today we unpack what Jesus' crucifixion accomplished.

Now there are various false religions that will agree with

the historical facts of the matter of the crucifixion.

The Catholics, the Jews, even the Jehovah's

Witnesses, they all believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross.

The problem, of course, is what are the implications of the

crucifixion?

And if we differ on the implications of the crucifixion,

we don't agree on some of the most important matters.

It is not sufficient to just agree with the fact that Jesus was crucified.

Because in the end, as Hezekiah read to us this morning, how we

receive God's grace from the cross

matters just as much.

What do I mean by that?

Many of these religions, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses,

will hold to this passage that was just read today, Luke 23.

And they will gladly talk about the thief on the cross.

The difference is how do they view how this thief was saved?

For true followers of Christ, how this thief was saved is just as

anyone else is saved.

The thief repented and believed in Jesus

and at that moment he was saved.

He trusted in Christ.

Now you talk to Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses,

they'll actually argue that this was an exception.

For the Catholics, the thief never really got baptized.

And baptism is required for the reception of God's grace.

For the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, he never really got to do any good works.

How could you when you're hanging from the cross?

Yet what does Jesus say?

Today you will be with me in paradise.

And for them, this passage is a thorn on their side and they have to label it as an

exception.

But for us, it's the norm.

That's what we're reading today.

The question today that we need to face is what did Christ's

crucifixion accomplish?

It's more so than what actually happened, but rather what are the implications of

Christ's crucifixion?

What did He actually do through the crucifixion?

First, when we genuinely trust in the crucified Christ, we immediately

enter into His kingdom.

When we genuinely trust in the crucified Christ, we immediately enter into His kingdom.

From the mockery of the religious leaders and the soldiers, we see one of the

criminals now mocking Jesus.

That one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him saying, If you are the Christ, save yourself and us.

We can hear the sarcastic tone from the criminal, If you are the Christ, save

yourself and us.

Luke characterizes it as blasphemous.

That's how we can hear the tone.

It's not a genuine plea for salvation at all.

It's a mockery.

He is misrepresenting Christ.

The thief is slandering Christ.

The call for salvation is a joke to him.

At least he will die laughing.

Now even a dying guilty criminal mocks the king who is innocent, hanging on the

cross.

Of course, ironically, by staying on the cross, Jesus saved the guilty.

By staying on the cross, Jesus saved the guilty criminal on His right.

According to Matthew and Mark's accounts, both of the criminals were mocking Jesus.

I do want to clear this up.

Yet in Luke, we get one mocking criminal and one faithful criminal.

So what is the deal with this discrepancy?

Or I need to say seeming discrepancy.

There is no discrepancy in God's Word.

This can easily be understood when we consider that Jesus'

crucifixion took hours.

What that means is, just as Matthew and Mark depicted, the two criminals initially

started out mocking Jesus together.

Yet after seeing how Jesus suffered righteously, although sinless, the second

thief repented.

And Luke is the only one that will show this interaction.

Luke shows the camera angle that Matthew and Mark did not.

So they're not actually going against each other.

Luke just shows a different picture of what happened afterwards.

Now, verses 40 to 42 show us what the other

criminal responded to Christ crucified.

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Do you not even fear God, seeing you

are under the same condemnation?

And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong.

First, the thief on the right rebukes the blasphemous criminal.

After all, the slanderer is in no place to condemn the innocent Jesus.

He recognizes God's hand in all of this.

Do you not even fear God?

Can't you see what you're doing by mocking the innocent Christ?

You are opposing God by mocking the righteous one.

After all, the ninth commandment prohibited slandering against one's neighbor.

The blasphemous criminal was doing exactly that.

Moreover, the hypocrisy is, the criminal who was blaspheming Jesus was

guilty, and Jesus wasn't.

Moreover, the second criminal has the right view of Jesus.

This man has done nothing wrong.

This pronouncement of innocence is the sixth one in Luke.

Now, Herod, Pilate, multiple times, and this criminal all find

Jesus innocent.

And there will be one more after this.

They all echo how God views Jesus.

Jesus is the unblemished and pure lamb of God.

Now, verse 41 is also a confession.

The second criminal personally takes responsibility for his sin.

He admits that he is condemned justly, and he is receiving the due reward

for his deed.

He's not minimizing what he's done, right?

He's not saying, oh, the law is so unfair.

It was just a little insurrection.

And there's also no blame -shifting.

Oh, well, you know, you coerced me into all of this.

It's your fault.

There is also no self -justification.

Well, it wasn't evil.

I was fighting against an evil empire.

This criminal confesses his sin without minimizing, blame -shifting, or self -justifying.

He knows he is in the wrong, and he agrees with God regarding what he has

done.

That's what confession means.

Con, with.

Fes, to speak.

Who are you speaking with?

With God.

You're speaking in agreement with God because he saw what happened, and he only

speaks what's true.

And a genuine, godly confession is the first fruit of repentance.

You cannot repent without the true view of your sinfulness.

You cannot repent without the true nature and character of your sin and what you have

committed.

And there cannot be true repentance without one's honest view and

admission of his own sin.

And after his confession, he makes a plea of salvation.

Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

He turns to Christ and asks for mercy.

After turning away from his sin, he turns to his Savior.

He pleads that Jesus would remember him.

And there are a couple of remarkable points here.

First, some translations have Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And that's because some of the older manuscripts have Jesus remember me instead of

Lord remember me.

Either way, the thief personally and respectfully approaches Jesus for mercy.

Notice, while the uncrucified religious leaders and

soldiers who are technically guiltless before the law

mockingly called Jesus King, this thief personally and desperately

calls out to Jesus to save.

The truly guilty one, the publicly humiliated one, is the

one who will be saved because he calls out to Christ.

Notice, the thief does not go to Mary first to gain access to her son.

The thief directly speaks to the Son of God and Jesus.

That's him alone.

There's no other intermediary between the guilty and the innocent.

Second, the thief believes that Jesus' crucifixion will not be the end to this

king.

After all, look at the plea.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Despite how Jesus is crucified right next to him right now, the thief believes

Jesus will fully restore his kingdom.

In another sense, despite Jesus' crucifixion, the thief knows the rightful King

will reign.

Despite the crucifixion, King Jesus will be victorious.

Despite the crucifixion, Jesus will not be hung on the cross eternally.

What the thief may not have known is because of the crucifixion, King Jesus rules victoriously.

Third, the thief believes in Jesus' kingly authority precisely

because of the cross rather than all the miracles that Jesus has performed.

An English theologian, Alfred Plummer, states it beautifully.

Some saw Jesus raised the dead and did not believe.

The robber sees him being put to death and yet believes.

Consider that when someone asks for a miracle to prove the existence of Christ.

There was one who went to heaven without ever seeing one.

At the plea for mercy, Jesus gives the thief an immediate response.

Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Now, we need to note what Jesus does not say.

He does not say, how convenient to call for salvation right now, right before your death.

Or, you have not fulfilled the good deeds to make up for the wicked ones.

After all, remember your deed that brought you up here.

Or, you must suffer a little bit of purgatory, then you will be with me in paradise.

Purgatory exists in the Catholic theology for the purging of

sin, the purging of guilt.

That's a consequence for the sin that you've committed.

Rather, the Savior's response is as concise as it is comforting.

Assuredly, I say to you.

Assuredly, I say to you means it's not debatable.

It is not doubtful.

It is not uncertain.

Assuredly means this is what it is.

There's no argument.

There's no uncertainty.

Today, you will be with me in paradise.

Today is not when the kingdom is fully restored.

Who knows when?

After all, that was the prominent view in Judaism.

On the last days, the Messiah will come back and He will conquer all the nations

and all His enemies.

And, He will rule physically from Zion.

And, that's what we read in Psalm 110.

That's not today.

And, that wasn't that day either.

In that little thief's mind, he's thinking, well, the Messiah will come back in the

distant future.

And, maybe, maybe then, he will remember

this poor old thief.

He spent his last hour hanging by his side rebuking that loud mouth.

Not at all.

Today, you will be with me in paradise means salvation is effective today.

Deliverance occurs that very day.

And, paradise, of course, is the heavenly location where the saved souls end up.

And, what makes it paradise is because of the person you are with.

Jesus says, you will be with in paradise.

Paradise with Jesus is what makes it a paradise.

Paradise without Jesus is hell.

And, this interaction is crucial for us today because it shows us how the

crucified Christ saves.

It shows us what He does.

Many cults love to claim Jesus as their own.

But, the portrait of Jesus in Luke 23 drastically differs from the Jesus they claim to

worship.

And, this is why we really have to be careful when someone says, I believe in Jesus.

You need to unpack that.

What kind of Jesus are you believing in?

Is it the true Jesus of the Bible or is it some made up Jesus in your own image?

And, here are a series of questions to distinguish the real Jesus from all the fake ones.

After all, the fake ones can't save.

First, does your Jesus save someone who has a wicked record?

Is that even an option?

Or, do you have to be really born perfect?

Does your Jesus save someone who was never baptized?

Many cults require baptism for salvation.

We celebrate baptism.

We are having a baptism for Tovia at the end of the month.

And, please be praying for her that she is protected from all harm.

And, we're happy for her.

We'll rejoice with her.

But, baptism doesn't save.

The mere washing of water cannot wash away sins.

Baptism is a physical symbol of what happened

spiritually.

The true Jesus only required genuine faith.

Now, does your Jesus save someone who had no time to get his life together?

Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses require good works along with faith.

This thief could never do a single good work to undo his life of wickedness.

Yet, Jesus' promise of salvation is certain.

Today, you'll be with me in paradise.

Is Jesus' salvation sufficient at the very moment of faith?

He did not have to wait for the verdict.

The thief did not have to spend any time at purgatory.

The Catholics believe, and among them some other cults, that you cannot have assurance of salvation

the moment you're saved, the moment you believed.

And, the reason is, after all, you can, you know, bankrupt your salvation in the

future.

How can you?

You don't know when you're going to die.

You don't know what you're going to do before you meet Jesus.

Well, this thief had full assurance

that his salvation would be immediate.

The king saved him the moment he believed.

And now, when you bring this up to these cult groups, they will claim that this

case is the exception.

That's the argument I've been seeing from all three of them, really, Catholics,

Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

When I brought up Luke 23, and they would say, Well, that's just an exception.

After all, God knows his heart.

God knows what's going to happen.

However, a God who makes an exception for one is a changeable God.

God who makes an exception for one is an unjust God.

After all, wouldn't we call injustice, call out injustice, if our human judge

makes a too different standard for the same crime?

In fact, a God who is changeable, a God who is mutable, is no God at

all.

They're holding on to a fake Christ, to a false

God.

And as true followers of Christ, we believe this passage is the norm,

rather than the exception.

Which means all who genuinely repent and trust in Jesus Christ alone, who was

crucified for our sin, will be saved at that moment.

The very faith in Christ crucified that was sufficient for the thief

crucified is sufficient for us this morning.

Your faith in Christ crucified alone is enough to wash away all of your sins and

expunge the records.

And there's no exception.

Now, what were the results of Christ's crucifixion?

Christ faced the divine judgment for our sake so that we may be reconciled with God.

Christ faced the divine judgment for our sake so that we may be reconciled with God.

Verse 44, Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth

until the ninth hour.

In ancient Israel, a person's day started around 6 a .m., so the sixth hour becomes

noon, around noon.

A little note on the hours here.

Another gospel writer has a different hour.

I forget whether it was...

I think it's slightly earlier.

I think he says third hour.

Or three hours before.

And the reason is this.

No one had watches back then.

So what do they estimate?

Just the placement of the sun.

So if the sun is somewhere in between noon and 9 o 'clock, let's say 10 or

11, one could just as well say it's about the sixth hour,

but one could round down and say it's about the third hour, or so on.

So in that sense, the gospel accounts are not contradicting each other.

It's just a different rounding of the time since no one had a handheld watch.

So that's also important.

But what matters the most here is that darkness appears

in the morning to noon.

Right?

In noon and the afternoon.

What is striking is that the darkness lasts for three hours, from noon to around three,

according to Luke.

That is not natural.

Some people say that that's an eclipse.

You cannot have a solar eclipse around the full moon.

After all, the Passover is based upon the lunar cycle.

So this is not just a natural event where, oh, the moon covered the sun.

Now, darkness in the Old Testament is a motif.

It's an ongoing theme of God's judgment.

And we saw that in Exodus, right?

That's the ninth plague.

There's darkness over all the land of Egypt.

But what is more accurate here would

be what Amos 8, 9 through 10 says regarding

the judgment against God's people.

And on that day declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon

and darken the earth in broad daylight.

You couldn't get clearer than that.

I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation.

I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head.

I will make it like the mourning of for an only son and the end of it like a bitter

day.

In Amos, the Lord promises to judge Israel for their idolatry and their oppression of

the poor.

The cosmological sign of the divine judgment is the darkness over the whole land

at noon where normally the sun is shining the brightest.

When God judges His people, even the heavens will show it.

When that happens, all who are in the land will lament.

Now, what is odd in Luke's passage is that the judgment is not poured on the idolaters and

the wicked rulers but rather on Christ Himself.

The one who cries out is the only innocent person in the whole land.

Ultimately, the pain of the cross was not any emotional

humiliation nor any physical pain, but rather the divine

judgment poured upon the Son of God for the sin of His people.

Jesus God Himself suffered the wrath of God that we deserve so that we

could be forgiven.

The fact that the spectators are not experiencing the divine judgment

that very day is the physical representation of the doctrine of the

substitutionary atonement.

What that means is that Jesus took the place of sinners in judgment so that

the sinners may take His place in righteousness.

Jesus suffered the judgment.

That was the most painful moment on the cross.

It's not the nails.

It is the wrath of God that was poured intensely

down on Him for those hours.

Now, what is the result of this?

Then the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was torn in two.

After a cosmological sign, we see a cultic sign.

Cultic means related to the temple.

The veil of the temple would have been a beautifully woven curtain made of blue,

scarlet, and purple fabric from Babylon.

Remember, this is the second temple.

And that veil divided the holy of holies and the rest of the temple.

Now, what is the significance of this veil?

This veil covered the holiest room in the whole temple.

The temple itself is holy.

But inside that temple, there was even a holier portion.

It's called the holy of holies.

It's a cubic room, as in the length, width, depth, they're all the same measurement.

And that room was available for one man and one man

only in the entire year for one day.

And that was on the Day of Atonement.

You might know it as the Yom Kippur.

The high priest would enter this room after making sacrifice, not only for the sin of his

people, but for his own sin, because he was no perfect himself.

And he would enter that room to encounter God's presence.

Only one man in the whole world in one day could encounter God's presence like that

for the atonement of the nation's sin.

And although missing in the first century, the Solomonic Temple, the first temple at the Ark

of the Covenant in that room,

and it was, as the name suggests, the holiest room in the whole building.

And when Jesus suffered the judgment for our sin, the veil that separates the Holy God from the

rest of the world was torn in two.

Matthew says it's from top to bottom, which means it couldn't have been done by a person.

But it was a divine act.

Symbolically, God's holy presence became accessible to the rest of the world

the day and at the completion of Jesus' crucifixion, when He suffered the

judgment that we all deserved.

What that means is you did not have to be the high priest of one specific nation to approach

God's presence once a year.

When Jesus suffered for our sin, He established a way to God

that any of the Old Testament saints could only have dreamed of.

Jesus' death made Herod's glorious temple obsolete.

Jesus' death made a way for sinners to reconcile with the Holy God.

After Jesus suffered the divine judgment for our sake, He cries out, Father, into your hands I

commit my spirit.

And this is a quotation from Psalm 31 .5.

In Psalm 31, if you read the whole psalm, it's a prayer of a righteous man who is in

need of deliverance because he is suffering at the hands of his enemies.

Ultimately, Jesus is the most fitting righteous sufferer.

Ultimately, His suffering is the fulfillment of all righteous suffering.

This call is the Son's cry of His commitment to His Father as He

awaits His resurrection.

Despite the death He is about to face, Jesus will trust His Father with His life.

And as Jesus died, His commitment to God the Father was unshaken and unshakable.

The irony, of course, is there is one man

who obeyed about the tree when the

result would have been death,.

And he obeyed,.

Compared to one man who was supposed to obey about the tree

and the result would have been life, and he disobeyed.

Jesus is the perfect righteous Son of God.

Now, how do the spectators respond?

The next three verses show three different groups of people responding differently.

First, after witnessing all of this, the Roman centurion evaluates Jesus' innocence.

So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, certainly this man was a

righteous man.

This is the seventh and the last pronouncement of Jesus' innocence, and it comes from,

ironically, a Roman officer who was in charge of the crucifixion.

In fact, he praises God for this.

A Gentile executioner is more sensitive to the heavenly and theological

revelation during Jesus' crucifixion than the Jewish spectators,

and this will unfold in the second book, the book of Acts.

Of course, not the same centurion, but salvation will come to the

Gentiles.

Second, the Jerusalemites, who called for Jesus' execution, go home

lamenting, beating their breasts as the physical expression of the inward sorrow.

In the end, there is visible regret in the crowd.

Many of them chanted, crucify him, but after witnessing the divine

signs, they are filled with grief for putting their Messiah to death.

Perhaps some of them will respond in faith at the Pentecost.

Third, Luke leaves us in suspense regarding Jesus' acquaintances, but all his

acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching

these things.

They're watching, and we will later see how they will respond to Jesus' death.

Whether close friends or total strangers, Jews or Gentiles, officers or civilians,

Jesus' crucifixion publicly left a mark on all who were watching.

Jesus' death was not an ordinary execution, but a public, world

-changing event witnessed by many.

It wasn't some New Age experience that is just individualized and personal.

It was an historical event that shook the world.

Although we are far from Jerusalem of the first century, we are still impacted by

Jesus' death this morning.

The most crucial impact is that through Jesus Christ, anyone, no

matter your socioeconomic background, no matter your ethnicity, your history

of sin, anyone can approach the throne room of grace.

And this is not because you were good enough, and this is not because God had to lower His standard

or curve the test of righteousness, but precisely

because God fulfilled His righteous standard when He was crucified and

faced the judgment on your behalf.

Your present access to God is, in fact, the biggest blessing

that God has to offer, because it's God Himself.

And consider this.

Ever since the beginning of history, ever since the Garden of Eden,

really, God and His people have been separated by sin.

In fact, we often lament the fact that we lost eternal life when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.

However, I would like to bring up or suggest that the biggest loss would be our

relationship with God.

No longer could humans walk freely with God in the cool of the Garden.

This separation continued on for thousands of years.

And God graciously allowed sinful man to interact with Him through

the sacrificial systems and temple worship.

It was restrictive and limited because of Israel's sinfulness.

After all, a sinner cannot stand before the Holy God and expect to live.

For the majority of Israel, for the majority of time, and for the majority of the world, the direct

access to God was not available.

Now, fast forward to the first century, and there comes a Jewish man, and in the streets of Jerusalem,

he cries out, I am the temple of God.

You mean, he's the meeting place between humans and God?

And he says, if you destroy me, I will raise it up.

If you destroy this body, I will raise it up in three days.

And in fact, that's what exactly they choose to do.

They do destroy Him.

They crucified Him.

They crucified Christ, the God -man, the meeting place of God.

If you've met Jesus, you've met God.

And what do they do?

They kill Him.

When God came to His people to dwell among them, His people rejected and killed Him.

But in His mercy and grace, through Jesus' death, that God became

even more approachable.

God made a way for His people to access Him.

Not in the same way as before, but in the more personal and intimate way.

When you trust in Christ, His death made a way for Him to dwell in

you.

Think about that.

When you believe in Jesus' death for your sin and His resurrection, God Himself dwells in

you rather than in a building.

This building is not the temple.

You are.

God does not dwell in this building when you are not here during the week.

When we gather on Sunday mornings, the greatest blessing is that we get to

experience God's presence in each other through Jesus Christ.

And that's the ultimate access to God.

You don't enter a building to meet with God.

You don't kill innocent animals to meet with God.

You don't go to a priest to confess.

You go to Christ alone, who is God Himself.

And Christ's crucifixion accomplished it all, once and for all, so that you may be

completely reconciled with the Holy God.

His atoning sacrifice is sufficient for you as it was for

the crucified thief.

He took your sinful place, and He places you in His righteousness.

And what's more, is when Jesus comes back for His second coming

after His millennial reign, when He sets up the new heaven and new earth,

what is the dimension of the new city?

It's a cube.

The whole city is modeled after the Holy of Holies.

Anyone who belongs to that city will experience the direct presence of God.

And that's a giant city.

And we all get to look forward to that.

And that is precisely only done because of Jesus' death on the cross,

which allows us direct access pass to His gracious throne room.

And I would like to end with Charles Wesley's last verse of And Can It Be?

Beautiful, beautiful hymn.

We have some hymns in the back room, if you want to take one.

And Can It Be?

No condemnation now I dread, Jesus, and all in Him is mine,

alive in Him my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine.

Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.

Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, choose to die for

me?

Let us pray.

Father, we thank You.

We're grateful that the biggest blessing that we have this morning is that we can

experience the presence of Jesus just as the thief was promised.

And Father, we pray that we would not take this blessing for granted, that we would seek You, we would desire You,

we would long for His return.

And Father, we pray that this would be our highest good, that it would be

the most precious thing in our life.

No matter what we lose, no matter whom we lose, the fact that we have

Christ and His presence is eternally in us.

Father, we pray that we would remember that.

Help us to remember Him as He remembers us.

In His name we pray.