The Thief on the Cross (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendrock.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

Let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter 23 this morning. You're going to see Christ in Luke chapter 23.

In a passage we usually call the thief on the cross, but really it puts the focus on the thief when really it's about Jesus and Jesus the

Christ saving this criminal. When God saves you, you realize that even though my sin might be against other people, it's ultimately against God.

Look at how God changed him on his deathbed. He knew the justice of God.

We're going to get what we deserve. Look at verse 41. This man begins to preach Jesus as innocent, the spotless lamb.

See it in verse 41, the end, but this man has done nothing wrong. Literally nothing unbecoming.

He's done nothing criminal. Pilate says, I can't find a crime against him.

The thief on the cross says he's sinless. Everybody else is accusing

Jesus, shouting, crucify, hate, blaspheme, reviling, derogatory.

And here's the one guy up there half naked saying he didn't do anything wrong. Salvation brings you to a trusting, saving faith in Christ Jesus.

Do you see what he said in verse 42? Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. Isn't this fascinating?

Stop and think about this for a second. The only person to address Jesus by name in any of this.

The only person to say Jesus is here's this thief. J .C.

Ryle said he saw no scepter, no royal crown, no outward dominion, no glory, no majesty, no power, no signs of might.

And yet the dying thief believed and looked forward to Christ's kingdom. I mean, it's one thing if Jesus is miraculously healing ladies who had a bleeding issue for 12 years, healing lepers, raising somebody from the dead.

But here Jesus is dying on the cross. It's the shame before the glory. It's the cross before the crown.

And he still believes. This thief, you know what this thief knew? This thief knew that Jesus dying on the cross did not mean that he was no longer the

Messiah, but that he was the Messiah and the kingdom was coming soon. The first confessor of the kingdom of Christ, the thief.

And you know what? He's got a love for other people. That's one of the true signs of saving faith. When all of a sudden when

God saves you, he makes you born again. He causes you to believe. You believe.

And then after you say thank you, your next utterance usually is what? I better go tell my family members because this is true.

And if this is true and they die in their sins, they're going straight to hell. It's the same thing with the woman at the well.

God, the son, saved her. She wanted to go tell the town. If there's anyone here today who's trying to play a game with God saying, you know what,

I'm just going to have you as kind of intellectual faith and not really changed in my life and I'm still doing all the things that I did before.

I'm still living an unrighteous life and I'm a practicing fornicator, practicing adulterer, practicing homosexual, practicing liar, practicing drunk.

I'm still going to heaven because I believe. Let me remind you James 2. What use is it, my brethren, if a man continually says he has faith but he continually has no works?

That faith can't save him. Faith, if it has no works, is dead.

Do you think that thief on the cross had dead faith? I don't think so.

The first lesson from the thief on the cross and the Christ and the criminal is that when God saves you, you are completely different in the sight of God and then you're regenerated and you're new.

You still might struggle with sin but as my old pastor used to say, sin is not your master anymore and righteousness, you're not perfect in external or internal righteousness but it's a desire that you have, it's your direction in life.

You're not perfect but it's your direction. You want to obey, you have a desire to obey. Number two, the second lesson is that Christ has both the power and willingness to save sinners.

Christ has both the power and willingness to save sinners. So rejoice in God's saving work.

Aren't you glad that God saved sinners? I'm very glad because if God didn't save sinners,

He'd still be God. God would be just, God would be holy, God would be righteous. God could treat us like He did the fallen angels.

Out of all the angels that God created, one third of them rebelled. They went AWOL and they committed treason against God and God gave them what?

Justice. Was He still God? Yes. But God's a saving God and look at God's saving action, even in verse 43,

I tell you today you shall be with me in paradise. Can't you see

I'm dying for sinners? Don't bother me. I love Isaiah 63.

This one who is majestic in His apparel, marching in the greatness of His strength. It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

That grave was beckoning this man and Jesus was a mighty Savior on this guy's deathbed.

And He goes above and beyond the criminal's request. Immediate entry into heaven.

You know, when you come into your kingdom, God, would you remember me? How about today to show the saving nature of Christ Jesus?

Weak on the cross but a strong deliverer. He said, I'd like a blessing.

He said, this day. I'd like to be remembered. You'll be with me. Where are you going to be?

Phantom region, purgatory? No, in paradise. 1

John 4 says, In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

How about Ephesians chapter 5? God is a great Savior. If you're a bad sinner, you need a great Savior like this

Jesus today. Just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

God the Father pleased with that sacrifice. He didn't even have to save us.

You know the passage? For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only begotten Son, that those believing in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

I love George Beverly Shea. Once in a while, I'll sing some of his songs. You know George Beverly Shea? I think, does he sing

The Wonder of It All? Oh, The Wonder of It All. Just think of some of the neat things that you've seen in your life.

I've seen some pretty neat things. I've seen babies born. I've seen Niagara Falls. I've seen some pretty spectacular things across the world in Petra.

Things under microscopes. But the wonderful love of God. When I was younger,

I didn't like to talk about the love of God very much. You know why? Because everybody turned it into such a sentimental, sappy kind of love.

God loves you. Just keep on sinning. He's just kind of like an old grandpa and He'll let you do whatever.

Grandfather's license. I thought this love of God that I hear about all the time, it's not a motivator for me.

It's not a motivator, I don't think, for the men I knew. This kind of, like I said, this perpetual Mother's Day sentimentality.

But this kind of love where you lay down your life for someone weaker. Men in the military should figure this out very quickly.

That you know what? That is real honor and duty and courage. When I interviewed

Jeff Strucker the other day, he was in Black Hawk Down. Not in the movie. He was the guy in the movie.

And just to listen to him talk about how they knew when they went back to get those guys that they were all going to die because they'd already been in the city.

But you know, there was duty. There was honor. And there was a real sense of, I'm laying down my life for someone else.

And now, how much more? Jesus lays down his life not for comrades.

Not for fellow soldiers. But for sinful rebels who would kill Jesus if their arms were long enough.

Because we are in here with the rulers, with the people, with the other criminals saying, kill him!

And we're saying, with our sins. And we've said, in Adam. And Adam has said it, and we've said it.

God, damn him! That's exactly what we said. Get rid of him!

Wipe him out! Get him away! I've met people before, and they with their faces and with their attitudes have basically said,

I don't want to know. Their ears are closed. And it's like, I cannot hear about this. Because if I know how bad

I'm sinning, then I need a savior. And it's the pride of man that hates to acknowledge that we are wicked, fallen, perverse creatures.

And so if God saves those kind of people, it doesn't make us look good.

How can you make us look good? But it makes him look good when he saves people like us.

Can you imagine the day that Jesus died on the cross, he knew every sin you'd ever commit. Past, present, future.

And he still died on the cross. Spurgeon said, but we are sinners, offenders, rebels who have revolted and continually gone further and further away from God.

What shall we say of this God dying for us? Hear in his love, not that we love

God, but he loved us and sent his son to be an atonement for our sins. Let your soul lose itself in wonder, for wonder is, in this way, a very practical emotion.

Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship. Being amazed at what God has done for you, you will pour out your soul with astonishment at the foot of the golden throne in grateful, enduring singing, saying blessed in honor and glory and majesty and power and dominion and might are yours.

Ever read Paul? Paul could not get over his salvation 25 years later. Ever meet

Christians? And they're brand new Christians. I think we've got some brand new Christians here in the congregation. And when they get saved,

Nelly shut the door. Is that the right phrase? I don't think it is. I'm making them up.

They're fired up. They're enthusiastic. They're one breath away from hell and God saves them and then you can't shut them up if you had to.

And then you know what I would do? If I'm not thinking properly, I'll say they'll get over it.

They'll be staid and stoic like me pretty soon. No, I think what I might do is

I always sit at the front because if I need to come up and talk, which is usually every Sunday speak, then

I can get up here quickly. But I think I'm going to just start sitting in the congregation at different spots. Because I want to hear you sing.

And I wonder if I could listen to you sing if for that moment I could say to myself I think I know how much this man or woman values the atonement.

Because if you value the atonement, you don't care about the tune. You care about the words that they're biblical and Christ -centered.

But friends, I'll never forget what Sinclair Ferguson said. He said, sing like Jesus is holding the hymnal with you. Oh, the wonder of it all.

Oh, wonder of it all. Service is going quite late. Friends, Jesus was executed maybe with no clothes on.

Maybe he had a loincloth. And for three hours the torments of the dam, as it were, were compressed and then dumped on Jesus.

And because of your sin, you should have been tortured forever in eternity, naked and alone.

That's what one sin deserves. And yet Jesus steps in. That's why we call him our advocate, our captain.

He's the one that steps in and takes the punishment in our place. And he lives a life we could never live.

And we serve a savior that's like that. God confirms it by raising him from the dead. And if he's saved you, then won't you be willing to live your life for him?

Not out of, I'm going to save myself, but out of gratitude. It's an amazing thing to think that God saves.

Begin to read the Old Testament and you'll see wicked, stubborn, stiff -necked

Israel and God again and again and again and again, loving

Israel. You read the Bible and you go, Adam, how could you? Our federal head,

Adam, and what you did plunged all of us into this horrible sin. And what does

God do for Adam, even at the very beginning? He kills an animal when

Adam should have been killed and clothes Adam and Eve. It's the love of God.

Alright, number three. Number three. The third lesson

I want to bring to your attention today is number one, salvation changes a sinner. So if you're not saved, you're not born again.

Number two, Christ has both the power and willingness to save sinners and so that should reflect itself in our praise and our desire to serve.

Number three, embrace the sovereignty of God in salvation. Don't run from it. Embrace the sovereignty of God in salvation.

Don't run from it. Friends, most everyone here would recognize that God's sovereign over who your parents are, what color you are, what your ethnic background is, what year you were born, in what hospital or home you were born in, the weather, who's president.

But what can we learn in this passage when here's one thief deserving death, here's another thief deserving death but Jesus saves one.

Neither deserved it, he saved one. I'd like to talk to that thief that got saved.

Would you have talked to the thief this way? What was in you for Jesus to die for you?

What was in you? What did you come up with? What did God look down to the corridors of time to see in you so that he would bend his grace towards you?

What do you think the answers are going to be to those questions? Well, they're stupid questions. Oh, sorry,

I thought this was no compromise radio for a second. They're ignorant questions because there's nothing good in us and grace by definition is a sovereign grace.

King Ahasuerus, Esther, you can come into my presence. All the other ladies, no. This is what a king does.

A king does always as he pleases to whom he pleases. And here, can you really say the good thief who's now saying fear

God really was not quite as bad as this other thief?

J .C. Ryle said both plainly were wicked men. Both were receiving the due reward of their deeds. Both hung by the side of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Both heard him pray for his murderers. Both saw him suffer patiently. But while one repented, the other remained hardened.

While one began to pray, the other went on railing. Same opportunities, same position.

They saw the same things, heard the same things, yet why is only one saved?

What is the only reason why one is saved? You say because one believed and the other didn't.

Then I ask you the question, how did he get his faith? Did God owe that thief the halting of justice?

No, the only reason you're in heaven, going to heaven, if you are a Christian, is because of God's mercy.

Romans 9, it depends not upon man's will or exertion, but upon God's mercy.

Isn't that amazing? Both deserve to die, yet God chose one.

You say, well I don't like that. Can I ask you a question? If you're a

Christian today, can you say, I sought God before he sought me? I sought

God before he sought me. Then you don't understand what the

Bible says about total inability and depravity. Let me ask you another question. Does it lie within the power of the sinner's will to yield himself up to God and believe?

No. James chapter 1, listen to this. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.

He chose to do that. God did. I like what this street orator said.

Socialism can put a new coat on a man, but Jesus Christ can put a new man in the coat.

Maybe that'd be a good Occupy Boston slogan. Just saying. Let us appeal to the actual experience of the

Christian reader. Was there not a time when you were unwilling to come to Christ? There was.

Since then you have come to him. Are you now prepared to give him all the glory for that? Do you acknowledge you came to Christ because the

Holy Spirit brought you from unwillingness to willingness? You do, says Arthur Pink.

Then it is not also a patent fact that the Holy Spirit has not done in many others what he has done in you.

Granted that many others have heard the gospel, been shown their need of Christ, yet they are still unwilling to come to him.

The average evangelical pulpit conveys the impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner, whether or not he shall be saved.

It has been said that God has done his part, now man must do his. Alas! What can a lifeless man do?

A man who by nature is dead in trespasses and sins? If the truth were really believed there would be more dependence upon the

Holy Spirit to come in with his miracle working power and less confidence in our attempts to win men for Christ.

Those are wise words. Jesus on the cross still sovereign over the universe.

Who's going to heaven and who doesn't? By the way, if you're not a

Christian today or you don't know if you're elect, let's settle it right now. Why don't you just settle it right now? If you don't know if you're chosen by God, if you don't know if you're a believer, you go, what's going on with all this election?

I'm not sure. So then settle the issue. Repent of your sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look to him with faith. Look to him for a perfect atonement and resurrection and then you'll know you're elect.

That's how you'll know you're elect. Because believers believe and we know they're elect.

Because listen to the order, Acts 13, 48. As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

God appoints you to eternal life and you believe. And can you think about it? God knew exactly what that thief would do.

There's nothing good in that thief and God said, I pass over you. That criminal, we never knew anything more about him.

Died in his sins most likely. Punished now. In hell, waiting for the judgment, waiting for the lake of fire.

This other thief though, the penitent thief, God knew all about him in eternity past. He didn't deserve any salvation.

He didn't deserve saving faith. He didn't deserve substitutionary atonement. He didn't deserve to be there in heaven.

But God said, I'm going to love you anyway. That's pretty amazing to think about. And our last lesson for today, thief on the cross, salvation is by faith alone.

Sola Fide. Salvation from a human perspective is not earned nor demanded. It is by faith alone.

Look at verse 42. Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. He didn't say Jesus, I was baptized.

He didn't say Jesus, I'm religious. I did some good deeds.

It's by faith alone. Remember me. By the way, when the

Bible says remember, remember me, what's that mean? When you stop thinking about me a little bit, remember me.

Kind of like those little love is cartoons. They still have those? Is that what they were called?

I don't know. What's a newspaper? Poor kids can't even grow up playing with silly putty anymore because there's no newspaper to put them on.

The flood. Genesis 8. And God remembered

Noah. Oh yeah, Noah. Was busy for 40 days and there's

Noah. Oops. Lord's Supper. Do this in remembrance of me.

Oh yeah, I kind of forgot about Jesus this week. Remember in the

Bible, same thing here. Jesus, remember me. Call to your mind and do something about it.

God remembered Noah and then here comes the wind and the dry land is going to be there soon.

Going to rescue him. For us we say, I'm going to remember Jesus and I will rededicate as it were my life to following Christ Jesus.

Remember me. Do something about it is what it means. Here we have saving faith.

Saving faith. Saved by faith alone. People say, you know what, you've got to be baptized to get to heaven. Really?

The thief is not baptized. The thief was not a member of a church. The thief didn't do anything except look away from himself and look to Christ Jesus.

Faith alone. You say, well almost sounds like then faith saves you.

Faith is meritorious. He had no faith. He had faith. It must be faith that saves. Friends, faith didn't die on the cross.

Faith wasn't raised from the dead. Faith isn't going to appear to the 500. Faith is not going to return soon.

Faith says, I contribute nothing except sin, but I'm going to take God's word for it. God, you said this is the sin bearer.

He's fully man and fully God. He's virgin born. I believe that. I take you at your word. I contribute nothing.

There's nothing I do when I believe. It's not because you're believing you're saved, but because you're saved, then you believe.

Listen to Spurgeon. Faith is chosen by God to be the receiver of salvation, because it does not pretend to create salvation, nor to help it, but is content humbly to receive it.

Faith is the tongue that begs pardon, the hand which receives it, and the eye which sees it, but it is not the price which buys it.

Faith never makes herself her own plea. She rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ. She becomes a good servant to bring the riches of the

Lord Jesus to the soul, because she acknowledges when she draws them and owns that grace alone and trusted her with them.

If you think your faith is the source of your salvation, may I disavow you of that. Faith is the instrument that's non -meritorious that receives it, and your faith doesn't cause your salvation.

God's salvation causes God's grace, causes your salvation, and you respond with grace.

That's exactly what happened here. Do you think when you get to heaven and you see the thief on the cross, where'd you come up with that faith of yours?

The other guy didn't have faith, you had faith, of course not. So I guess the obvious question is, do you believe?

Do you believe looking away from yourself saying, I'm not good, I don't contribute anything good, but I, Father, if there's mercy to be found, remember the tax gatherer,

Lord have mercy upon me, what? The sinner. That's the prayer.

And that kind of prayer doesn't cause God to save you. God is the sovereign in salvation.

But that is a good prayer to pray, saying, I offer nothing to you, I'm a notorious sinner like the thief.

God, I know you're a savior, and would you be pleased to save me? ...

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