The Thief on the Cross (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today we are coming up to a momentous occasion.

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I don't know what that momentous occasion is, but I'm sure we're coming up to it. Some anniversary, something big's gonna happen.

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If I was a prognosticator, if I was looking into my proverbial crystal ball, something big is gonna happen for you, and it's probably positive if you'll just sow your seed.

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No, today we're gonna look at the thief on the cross, and today is gonna be more of a Bible study, a Bible exposition.

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I want you to think about Christ's magnificent love for sinners, even at the end of someone's life.

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But before we do that, I wanna make sure you know that my new book is out, Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus.

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And lest you think I begin to talk, I have some juice in my mouth, a particle.

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I started juicing a while ago, and yum. I think today

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I had, let's see, cucumber, celery. I did put in a little bit of green pepper, even though I'm not a green pepper person.

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Apple, no radishes today, carrots, head of lettuce.

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How's that? Juice it up, baby. I'm not trying to promote myself directly.

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I don't think that's the goal, but this is an important book. I wrote it a few years ago, and it's finally published by day one, and it talks about Jesus as king.

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And so our philosophy at Bethlehem Bible Church, no compromise radio, the books that I write, here's our philosophy.

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We want to promote them, tell you about them, advertise them, if you will. Advertise is a bad word when it comes to the gospel.

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But we want to let you know about these things because the church, Bethlehem Bible Church, promotes Jesus. That's why we exist, to glorify the

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Lord Christ Jesus and proclaim his good news. No compromise radio ministry, that's why we exist.

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We exist to promote Christ Jesus in his great life, death, burial, and resurrection.

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And that's why we exist, to talk about the one who never compromised. And then with books too, the sovereignty and supremacy of King Jesus, bowing to the gracious despot.

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I want to promote that because it promotes Jesus Christ. Sinclair Ferguson and I and my brother

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Pat were in a car and Sinclair was asking me about the ministry, what I've been doing. I told him

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I wrote my first book on Jesus, the Prince of Preachers. And the second one that I was writing at the time, this one, he wanted to know about it and I told him.

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And he said, well, you know, books about Jesus don't sell. Evangelicals don't buy books about Jesus.

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And so when I told Todd Friel that story, that's when he wrote the introduction, or the commendation that says, you are holding what is destined to be one of the worst selling books of all time.

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There are a plethora of books describing Jesus as friend because they sell. There are very few books that describe

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Jesus as king. It's about time that a book is written and published to balance the scales of our understanding of our

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God. And evangelicals need to read this book. Actually liberals need to read this book and unbelievers need to read this book as well.

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If you want to have a book for an unbeliever to read, this is a good one because every knee will bow one day.

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And don't you want your unbelieving friend to bow now instead of bow later? And so this educates people about the person who they need to believe in.

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So that's why we promote the books. I know I'm not gonna get rich from them. I know I'm not gonna make a bunch of money.

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I know I'm not gonna be a superstar from all this, but I want to be faithful to the Lord. And as the radio show, the church, and any other thing that I'm involved in,

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I want those things to be involved in preaching the gospel, proclaiming Christ Jesus, the good news.

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And the good news is not Jesus lives in my heart. The good news is not anything subjective.

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The good news is a declaration of something that happened historically 2 ,000 years ago outside of us objectively before we were born.

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Jesus died a substitutionary death, satisfying the holy laws of God, the holy law of God.

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And he was raised from the dead. The sacrifice worked. It was acceptable to God the

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Father. And he bore our punishment and our shame and our guilt and our sins in a penalty fashion, penal substitution.

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And then he was raised from the dead. That is historical. Of course, it's theological as well, but that is a historical fact.

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It is good news, and good news by definition needs to be declared. It needs to be proclaimed. It doesn't need to be shared.

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It doesn't need to be conversed about. Certainly you can talk about Christ's death, but this news needs to be proclaimed to people, both believers and unbelievers.

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First, we start with unbelievers. Then we proclaim this good news to believers as well. So anyway, that's why

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I want to talk about the book. You can get it super cheap. I get an author's discount. And so we're passing on that discount to you as we sell the book with shipping, et cetera, handling.

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I never liked that handling thing. There's like $4 handling. So you can get the book for 10 bucks, and that includes handling.

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Well, today, the thief on the cross. If you have your Bibles, turn to Luke chapter 23.

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This is a passage that J .C. Ryle calls a description of Christ's greatest trophy.

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J .C. said, whenever the gospel of Christ is preached, they will always be honored, loved, and had in remembrance.

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Talking about this passage here, the thief on the cross. And this is a great passage because it talks about Christ's saving work.

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So what I'll do is I'm going to read from Luke chapter 23 first, and then we'll talk about the thief on the cross and learn some lessons from that.

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A wonderful, wonderful passage that I love to preach on regularly and haven't for some time. So I thought, you know what?

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I will preach to you because this is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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This will provoke you for certain these biblical truths. Luke 23, 13, and Pilate summoned the chief priest and the rulers and the people and said to them, you brought this man to me as one who incites the people to rebellion.

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And behold, having examined him before you, I found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against him.

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No, nor has Herod, for he sent him back to us. And behold, nothing deserving death has been done by him.

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I will therefore punish him and release him. But they cried out altogether saying, away with this man and release for us

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Barabbas. He, Barabbas, was one who had been thrown into prison for a certain insurrection made in the city and for murder.

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And Pilate wanting to release Jesus addressed them again, but they kept calling out, kept on calling out saying, crucify, crucify him.

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And he said to them the third time, why, what evil has this man done? I have found in him no guilt demanding death and I will therefore punish him and release him.

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But they were insistent with loud voices asking that he be crucified. And their voices began to prevail.

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And Pilate pronounced a sentence that their demand should be granted. And he released the man they were asking for who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, but he delivered

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Jesus to their will. And when they led him away, they laid hold of one Simon of Cyrene coming in from the country and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

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They were following him a great, and there were following him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting him.

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But Jesus turning to them said, daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

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For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.

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Then they will begin to say to the mountains, they begin to say to the mountains, fall on us into the hills, cover us.

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For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry? And two others also who were criminals were being led away to be put to death with him.

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Mark and Matthew, by the way, say that they were thieves and robbers. Luke 23, 33, and when they came to the place called the

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Skull, and that is because of the shape of the area, not because there's a skull everywhere to be found on the ground, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.

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Why on the left and why on the right? Probably to make him more humiliated, to make it more of a shameful death, a disgraceful death, to show that he was right in the middle of sinful transgressors.

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But Jesus was saying, father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing. They cast lots, dividing up his garment among themselves.

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Now that first part, forgive them, they do not know what they're doing, certainly could be part of the text. There is a manuscript problem here.

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Some manuscripts have this, some don't. They didn't grasp the whole weight of how bad of a thing this was.

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Certainly 1 Corinthians 2, 8 says, for if they had understood it, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory.

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They're shouting, and what does Jesus do? He prays, and he probably doesn't have a lot of breath as he's crucified, but the thieves can hear him.

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What a scene that must have been. Look at the kind of people that give Jesus ill treatment.

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Verse 35, the people. The people stood by looking on, and even the rulers were sneering at him.

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It's another group of people. He saved others, let him save himself if this is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

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These onlookers were opening their mouth wide and making insults. Psalm 22 talks about that.

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They opened their mouth wide at me as a ravening and roaring lion. Spurgeon said, like hungry cannibals, they opened their blasphemous mouths as if they were about to swallow the man whom they abhorred.

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They could not vomit forth their anger fast enough out of through their mouths.

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They're hurling abuse at him, wagging their heads, Matthew 27 says. It's like a baseball pitcher.

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Just imagine a pro baseball pitcher now, a 98 mile an hour fastball right down the pipe.

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The rulers too, sneering at him, sneering, deriding. Interesting the word to sneer or to gloat means to deride aggressively.

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Listen to the Greek word, it's very onomatopoetic. Ek -muk -ter -idzo, ek -muk -ter -idzo, ek -muk -ter -idzo, ek -muk -ter -idzo, ek -muk -ter -idzo.

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You can just kind of get the idea, wow. Soldiers, not just the people, not just the rulers, the soldiers, verse 36.

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And the soldiers also mocked him, coming up to him, offering him sour wine.

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If you're the king of the Jews, save yourself. Now there was also an inscription above him, this is the king of the

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Jews. And as you've all been taught, when people were crucified back in those days, they would attach to the cross the name of the person and what he was being executed for.

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So the name and the crime. It's interesting the way this is put together in the

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Greek in Luke 23, 38, the king of the Jews, this one, this one.

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By the way, it is very interesting if you look at all four of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you put together what each of them say was above Jesus in the inscription.

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You need to put them all together to get the full weight of what was said, to get the full writing, because the authors would not put everything up there.

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It's not necessary for them to write down every word. Could have been some abbreviation, et cetera.

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But if you put them all together, here's what MacArthur said, quote, likely that all four evangelists simply reported the substance of the inscription elliptically, with each one omitting different parts of the full inscription.

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All four concurred with Mark that the inscription said the king of the

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Jews, Matthew 27, Mark 15, John 19. Luke added this is at the beginning, and Matthew started with this is

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Jesus. John's version began Jesus of Nazareth. Putting them all together, the full inscription would read, this is

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Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. And so Pilate, with a dig to the

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Jewish leaders, says this is your king. Here he is. But the one group that I want to focus on on No Compromise Radio today, you can go to nocompromiseradio .com

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and listen to some interviews, is the two criminals, the robbers.

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And so we see that there were people there and soldiers and rulers.

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Now look at these robbers. Luke 23, 39, and one of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at him, saying, are you not the

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Christ? Save yourself and us. That's exactly what has happened earlier. Hey, if you're the

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Christ, save yourself. If you're the Savior, save yourself. That's one of the reasons why the cross is offensive, 1

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Corinthians 1, verse 18, because how can Jesus save somebody else?

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He can't even save himself. These are criminals. They're robbers.

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They're evildoers, rebels who steal. And some even think that these could have been partners in crime with Barabbas.

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Now Mark says they both mocked Jesus initially. Mark 15, 32, let this

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Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

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So both insulting Jesus, heaping them on. Matthew 27, the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

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Literally blaspheming, railing, speaking impiously, speaking evil.

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Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself. Get us down from this cross.

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They're not thinking spiritual salvation from sin. They're thinking temporal deliverance from the cross.

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Now, G. Campbell Morgan said, in the midst of all the sounds of sneering, shouting, mocking, and jeering, then this remarkable thing happened.

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Suddenly in the midst of the gloom, in the midst of tragedy, in the midst of reballed mockery of these priests and soldiers, a voice was heard speaking on one of the crosses.

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So now we come to what we call the thief on the cross. But the other answered and rebuking him said, do you not even fear

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God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.

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And he was saying, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And he said to him, truly,

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I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise. What a passage. This morning when

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I got up, I did my typical grab my coffee, sit down with my Bible. I usually read a little bit in the

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New Testament. In my Greek New Testament, I usually read a passage. I usually read one of the

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Johannine writings because he's easier to read in the Greek. But I'm just trying to keep fresh on that and then read my

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Bible. Today I decided to just follow along and listen. And so I was listening to Luke 22,

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Luke 23, Luke 24 in the bible .ia's app, because you can read along with it and it is narrated.

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And so I find that a very helpful and profitable tool. And I just was listening to it thinking, man, this is amazing that we would get to know this.

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And so what we'll do in the remainder of a No Compromise show today, and then maybe next week as well,

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I wanna give you some lessons from the Thief on the Cross passage. Some kind of takeaways, some things that you could say, you know what, based out of this text, inferred from this text, pointing me to another theological truth, lessons to learn from the

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Thief on the Cross passage. Here's the first lesson. That salvation changes the sinner immediately.

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Salvation changes the sinner immediately. Now, when God saves you, of course,

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God's verdict of you is changed immediately. You're justified. The antonym for justification is condemnation.

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You're no longer condemned. You're justified. You have Christ's righteousness credited to your account.

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You are declared not guilty based on a foreign, alien, forensically imputed righteousness.

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Justification doesn't change your person like regeneration does or sanctification does, but it does change your status before God.

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You are declared just. And so certainly that changes. But what I mean here, salvation changes the sinner when justification starts, when justification happens, rather, that doesn't start, that's bad.

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When justification happens, sanctification starts. That's what I'm after. And so what does he start saying right away?

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I mean, when people are this, you know, Jesus is my savior, but he's not my Lord. I mean, the thief on the cross began to change immediately.

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He didn't have much time to change because he was gonna die soon, but he was hurling insults.

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Then the next thing you know, he's saying this. God has saved him. He changed quickly.

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And you could see the fruits of repentance in his life. Regeneration changes you.

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You mean to tell me that the spirit of God can dwell inside of you and you're not a different person? Titus 2 says, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.

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And when this grace of God appears, meaning the incarnation, what does this salvation do?

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Instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, that's the negative side, positively to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope in the appearing of our great

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God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

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So when God saves you, not only is your status before him, no longer enemy, but friend, but also you begin to change because of your new nature and because of God's sanctifying work in your heart.

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Romans 6 .17, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.

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G. Campbell Morgan goes on to say, by the way, G. Campbell Morgan was the pastor at Westminster before Martin Lloyd -Jones, and so Lloyd -Jones filled in for G.

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Campbell Morgan. An amazing revolution had taken place in the soul of this man. Luke describes him as a malefactor, that is a criminal, a lawless man.

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That means a man who had put God out of count and one who had no respect for his fellowmen, save to exploit them in his own interest and if necessary to kill them.

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We now hear him recognizing God. Do you not even fear God? And recognizing the rights of his fellowmen and owning his punishment as just.

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That is amazing. That is amazing. And certainly it's true when God saved you, you were different in terms of status before God, but also you were a different person because God begins to sanctify you.

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When God regenerated you and gave you a new nature, that new nature, even though immaturely and even though with only baby steps, begins to live itself out.

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That's the issue. You were taught in salvation to stand up for Christ and to love him, to hate sin.

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That's exactly what you did. That's what the thief on the cross did. Stood up for Jesus, for his name, for his glory, for his honor.

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Hating sin. Hey, we deserve this. Fearing God. You're gonna have to fear, stand before God one day and that should refrain you from adding more sin to your current sins.

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See how different this man began to act immediately. Who knows who had talked to him about Jesus before the cross.

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Maybe Jesus spoke to him on the cross. I don't know how he knew these things that he did know that text does not tell us, but this man begins to stand up for Jesus, to confess his sin, to have a real healthy fear of God, which is the beginning of all wisdom.

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It began to teach him to admit his guilt. Isn't that what we do when

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God, the father is drawing us and then when the spirit of God regenerates us, we see sin as what it is.

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Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done what is evil in thy sight. So thou, so you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.

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Psalm 51 .4, you see that you deserve the justice of God. You knew what you deserve, yet you knew

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Jesus was the lamb, the substitutionary sacrifice, the exchange in your place.

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And you talk about the innocence of Christ Jesus. This man has done nothing wrong.

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Literally nothing unbecoming, let alone criminal. This man begins to say things about Jesus, to stand up as Jesus' advocate and his defense lawyer.

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They're all shouting, crucify him. We have no king but Caesar. The disciples have run away like cowards.

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And this man is standing up for Jesus. That is amazing.

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The thief believing Jesus never did anything wrong. He's done nothing wrong.

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And when God saves you, something more happens. He gives you faith. That's part of conversion.

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Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. I'm gonna take you at your word. You're a king, you've got a kingdom.

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I'll take you at your word. Remember me. Calvin said, I know not that since the creation of the world there ever was a more remarkable and striking example of faith.

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The Greek scholar Lightfoot. A great faith that can see the sun under so thick a cloud that can discover a

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Christ, a savior under such a poor scorn despise crucified Jesus and call him

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Lord. That is amazing. It's one thing to follow Jesus, the miracle worker, the walker on water, the man who makes bread and fish multiply, the man who makes wine at Cana.

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But here, this is a man bleeding and dying on a cross. And this particular man is not seeing lepers healed, the blind see, the dumb speak, feeding of the 5 ,000.

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The thief sees agony, weakness, anguish, and still believes. So when it comes to No Compromise Radio Ministry, we wanna say that Jesus Christ is king, he's

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Lord and he's savior, and you need to take him at his word and repent of your sins and believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and if he can save a sinner like the thief on the cross on his deathbed, he can save you too.

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Now is the time of salvation. Today is the day of redemption. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.