The Thief on the Cross (Part 3)

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.

Lots of people these days have said Christianity that is full of doctrine will drive people out of the churches.

Too much doctrine, dull dogma, you'll drive people out. If you want to get people in, water things down.

Talk about therapeutic issues, moralistic issues. Come on, give me practical things, relevant things.

Give me how -to. Don't give me any of that dull doctrine, boring doctrine.

You know, the interesting thing is when you look at Christianity and her claims, it's all about doctrine, but it's not boring at all.

The drama of redemption, and as Dorothy Sayers said, you can accuse Jesus of lots of things, but nobody could ever accuse

Him of being boring. It's exciting. The drama is what's so wonderful.

The doctrine about who Christ is, what He's done. The timeline stretching back into eternity past and the plan of God.

It's exciting. The doctrine of who Jesus is and how He condescends, sacrifices

Himself for others. Is there anything more exciting? Turn your

Bibles to Luke chapter 23, and we're going to try to finish up today a little excursus on Jesus Christ and the thief, commonly called the thief on the cross.

Two weeks ago, we started this, we're in 1 Corinthians 9, but I wanted to just focus upon Christ because in my mind, in my study,

I've just been looking at Jesus on the cross and watching Him and being in admiration of Him.

I'm thinking to myself, all glory, laud, and honor to the eternal King. The other day,

I walked into Walmart and I had a spiritual experience. I did.

I hate to admit it, even the West Boylston Walmart of all places I walked in, and I'd been thinking about this passage, and I'd been thinking about who

I used to be and the sins that I lived in and the person that I was and what

I deserved when I died. And then how God interrupted me, to quote Pastor Dave, how

God stopped me, how God granted me repentance, how God made me alive, how God caused me to be born again for no reason except His good pleasure, and how

I was just different. And when I walked into Walmart, I began to look at the people. And here's what

I thought. I thought, I know something that none of these people know. I've been let in on a divine secret.

God has disclosed Himself to me. God has revealed Himself, the word revelation means to uncover.

There's been a secret, a truth, and God has just opened my mind through the Spirit's working through His word.

And now I know about the world, about life, death, salvation, suffering, comfort, hope, eternal life.

I know everything, and everybody else is walking around zombie -like over in the bait and tackle section.

I mean, they're just walking around. And I thought, I know these things. And I think to myself, I just want to tell somebody about who

God is, who Christ is. I know these things, and they don't, not because I'm better, probably because I'm worse, but I know these things because God has disclosed them to my mind through His Holy Spirit illumined word.

And I just thought, the joy, the peace. I wasn't thinking, oh, all that stuff

I know about God is boring, dull, down with dogma, up with experience.

It was that the dogma, the doctrine, who I was in Christ and who

Jesus was, it gave me the feelings of love and joy and peace and experiencing

God. Can you imagine? I'm going to write a new book about that. Experiencing God at Walmart. Finally, I can write a book that somebody would buy.

And so as we look at this passage today, the thief isn't the focus, the other criminal isn't the focus, the scorners aren't the focus.

This is a great passage because it keeps your mind where it should be. The spotlight is singular, and it's right on Christ Jesus, the

Savior. And you'll say to yourself, He is a great Savior. That's my Savior. That's my King. He did for the criminal what

He did for me. And I think you'll have joy today. And if you're not a Christian, today's a good day for you.

You'll see the immediacy, the importance of looking away from yourself and looking to the cross to live.

This is the passage that J .C. Ryle said, whenever the gospel of Christ is preached, these verses will always be honored, loved, and had in remembrance.

Why? Because they're all about the Lord. This is Christianity. It's not how to, it's who

God is and what He has done. Let's pick it up in chapter 23, verse 32, just a quick review just so we're all up to speed on the passage, and then we'll give some lessons learned from the thief on the cross.

So we'll do some exposition and then some reflections derived from the truth that you could see on the thief on the cross.

Luke 23, 32, two others who were criminals, thieves and robbers is what they were, were led away to be put to death with Him.

And when they came to a place that is called the skull, it looked like a skull. There wasn't a lot of skulls around.

Calvary is the name of it in Latin. There they crucified Him and the criminals, one on His right, one on His left.

For disgracing, for humiliating the so -called King. And Jesus said,

Father, forgive them. I'm sure He was gasping for this breath to speak, for they know not what they do.

And what did they do? They piled on all the more ignoble actions.

And they cast lots to divide His garments. He's not even dead yet. Gambling for His clothes.

And the people stood by watching. People stood by watching, but the ruler scoffed at Him saying,

He saved others. Let Him save Himself. You just hear it almost like recess at a public school.

He saved others. Let Him save Himself. You just see the head wagging. He saved others.

He raised them from the dead. He healed them. He gave them food. Now save yourself. If He is the

Christ of God, His chosen one. Kind of a bad place to be if you're going to be the chosen one of God.

I'd hate to be the unchosen one of God. Taunting Jesus to save Himself.

Little did they know what Luke has already said in chapter 2. To you is born this day in the city of David, a

Savior who is Christ the Lord. Soldiers also mocked

Him, verse 36, coming up and offering Him sour wine. This is a negative thing to do to try to keep

Him alive longer. There's not any kindness here. And saying, if you are the King of the

Jews, save yourself. You can't fulfill this is the taunt. You say you're the

King, but you can't save yourself. There was also an inscription over Him. This is the

King of the Jews. Epigraphe, writing upon. This is the writing upon, name, crime.

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at Him saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.

Mark 15 says the other criminal had also mocked Him. It's stereo mocking.

One side over here mocking, the other side over here. But something's going to happen to this one criminal we'll see in a moment. Save yourself and us.

Get us down. We're not talking about eternal salvation, forgiveness of sins. We want to be down from this cross.

And isn't it interesting? One commentator said, everything is reversed in terms of what should be really happening to the

Creator, the Savior, the King of the universe. Everything's reversed. It should be everybody else on the cross and Jesus down off the cross.

But everything's weird. Everything's off. Things don't seem, from a human perspective, proper.

Now, it's interesting. I don't know if you've thought about it. Four times in five verses, saved.

Verse 20, chapter 23, verse 35, saved, saved. Verse 37, saved.

Verse 39, saved or save. Everything's about Jesus saving activity and they're mocking that.

Heather rebuked Him, verse 40, saying, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

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

Let me give you a little review on some of the lessons we learned last time and then we'll get to some of the new lessons. Number one, first lesson.

First reflection from what we've learned in this passage about our Lord. No particular order.

Lesson one, salvation changes the sinner immediately. Salvation changes the sinner immediately.

So if people say they're saved and there's no change in their life, no change in their attitudes, no change in their direction, no change in their affections, no change at all.

If there's no change in your life, there's been no change in your position. This man is changed.

That thief showed all kinds of repentance and faith and love for the Lord, standing up for him.

He was a different person. Can you imagine? Think about somebody in your own life who says, you know what?

I'm a Christian, but they act like, think like, and from your perspective, there's no difference between them and a pagan.

Do you mean to tell me that the God of the universe, omnipotent God of the universe who creates with the word,

Son, and there's the Son, can invade a person and there's no change at all?

No wonder Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my

Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?

And then, will I declare to them, I never knew you.

Oh, he knows about them, all right, but not in an intimate, personal way. This whole idea that you can take

Jesus as Savior without making him Lord is erroneous. First of all, you don't make

Jesus Lord as I was taught at Master's Seminary. What, Steve? Jesus is Lord.

If God the Father made him Savior and Lord, you can't just say, you know what? I need a little hell insurance.

Second lesson, Christ has both the power and willingness to save sinners, so rejoice in God's saving work.

Look at what he said in verse 43, truly, I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise. He has both the power and the willingness to save.

Steve's going to be preaching through and is preaching through the gospel of John, and you're going to see over and over and over in that great gospel according to John, Jesus has the power to save and he has the will to save.

He's able to save and he is willing to save. That's amazing, thinking about what we really deserve and what we've earned and what we should get.

What did the thief deserve, earn, get, merit? And we, like the thief, have earned hell, yet God, to use the expression, outdoes himself and saves.

Grandma Evie would probably say it this way, that's just like Jesus to save a sinner like that.

That's just like Jesus to save somebody like me, a strong deliverer to save sinners.

That's good news. Greater love has no one than this, than one laid down his life for his friends.

Keep your finger at Luke 23 and flip over to Isaiah 55 just for a second. I almost said

Isaiah, flip over there. I think once in Nebraska, I did a conference for pastors last weekend in the middle of Nebraska, and I think

I did say Isaiah. You would have been very happy that it's affecting me. It's taken me 14 years to learn some of these words.

I did tell them the one story, I said, when I first got to New England, coming from Los Angeles and Nebraska, and somebody did a scripture reading and they got up and said,

I am the Alpha and Omega. I said, I knew

I was in a different place, that I'm a missionary. Now, thinking about God, if you were

God, would you be a willing savior? Of course, if you're God, you have the power to save. But what kind of Greek God saves?

What kind of Molech God saves? What kind of Baal God saves at his own expense? No one saves like God at his own expense.

And for Isaiah the prophet, he thought about that. Now, lots of times we go straight to these verses.

Go to verse 8, Isaiah 55 verse 8. You probably know this verse. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the

Lord. And there's a huge gap by the way God thinks and by the way we think. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yours, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So here's my question. What is he talking about there? What is the context?

For my ways are higher than your ways. For my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. We just pull out verse 8 like it's kind of out on its own.

What's the immediate context? Well, what's the first word in verse 8? That should help us, for.

So it makes us go back up a little bit. You wanna know how God is such a God who doesn't think like we do? Because he's a

God who saves. Look at this, verse 6.

Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way.

And the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, Yahweh, that he may have compassion on him.

Don't miss this. Connect this to verse 8. And to our

God, for he will abundantly pardon. Isn't that good about God?

If you were God, I don't think you would abundantly pardon if they did something to your son. Yet God is willing and able.

And God is a mind -blowing God to Isaiah because he's a God who abundantly pardons.

Isn't that good? Just stop and think about your own sins for just a minute. Just have a little rewind back to as long as you can think.

And the different sins that you committed, sins of omission, sins of commission, sins of thoughts, words, deeds, sins of actions, sins of attitudes, sins of all kinds of things.

You just think, you know what kind of pardon I need? I need a final pardon, but I need abundant pardon.

What's the song? Grace that is greater than all our what? Sins. So when you think about God not having thoughts like us, tie it to redemption.

Let's go back to Luke chapter 23, lesson three. Embrace the sovereignty of God in salvation, don't run from it.

Embrace the sovereignty of God in salvation. At the end of the day, two thieves, one redeemed, one not.

What's the explanation for the one being redeemed and the other not? Is the explanation found inside one of the thieves?

This thief submitted his heart. This thief bowed the prayer. This thief did something.

The other thief, oh, he was worse. There's nothing in the text to tell us that one thief is worse than another.

The only reason why one is in heaven and the other isn't is because of the gracious, distinguishing, sovereign grace of God.

He's a God who abundantly pardons, but he does it based on his own good pleasure and his own free will.

This is a classic example. Both earned damnation, yet one was graced with a gift.

You say, you know what, I don't like that. Let me ask you a little something, short of some of the people that are from the east here.

Do you like it that you're able to, if you're single, able to pick your spouse?

If you're married, did you like it that you were able to pick your spouse? Do you like to be able to pick the job you work at?

Do you like to be able to pick your friends? Pick your church? Do you like to be able to pick those things?

Of course, this is a free country. And the reason why you like to pick and choose is because you're a reflection of God, you're an image bearer.

God picks and chooses, you pick and choose. When I was a kid, it was the sandbox. We used to play in the sandbox.

Now they probably have Xbox sandbox. It's an X sandbox. Actually have

Etch -a -Sketch's frames that you can put around your iPad now, so it makes you think you're playing with an

X, whatever it's called. You like to choose because you're an image bearer.

And so what you love in yourself, why do you hate in God? God chooses all the time.

God says, I choose Israel, I don't choose anyone else. None of them deserve to be chosen. Deuteronomy says, he chose

Israel because he loved them and he wanted to. God chooses some angels, he doesn't choose the other angels. Only the

Levitical priests can be priests, nobody else. Only these 12 can be apostles, nobody else.

So why are we blown away when we think of individual salvation, when it's part and parcel of the sovereign grace of God, picking and choosing?

At the essence of God, he picks and chooses. And for Paul, he didn't say, this is that dividing doctrine.

I don't wanna teach it to new Christians, this isn't going to work. Ephesians chapter one, what does Paul say? I'm gonna praise

God for God's election of me in eternity past, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless.

In love, he predestined us. Predestination is not loving. Well, then you need to read the Bible. Predestination happens because God looks down the course of time.

Well, then you need to read Ephesians chapter one, verse four. Paul couldn't get over election, and he tells it to the church right away.

He doesn't say, you know what, that's a secondary doctrine. The spirit of God has made it a primary doctrine, and the sooner you embrace it, the better off you'll be.

The better off you'll have a charismatic experience in Walmart. And when

I mean charismatic, I mean the root word, grace. I felt the grace, as it were,

I sensed it. There's nothing tangible, cuz it wasn't really feeling or sensing. I was replaying it over in my mind, the doctrine of unconditional election.

God chose me, and he should have damned me. Except he's a God who abundantly pardons. True or false, without election, no one would be saved.

True, because people are depraved, spiritually unable to save themselves. And unless God chooses you, you're not getting in heaven, so why would we hate it?

True or false, election harms no one.

True, the people that aren't elect, they get exactly what they want. And they don't want

Jesus, they don't love Jesus, they don't honor him, they don't give him exaltation. No unelected person ever says, you're giving me something that I didn't want.

True or false, man is in no position to judge God for what he does. Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 20.

Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?

Is there injustice with God regarding choosing Jacob over Esau? May it never be.

Election, on the other hand, produces awe and worship. God chose that other thief and how did he respond?

Worship, honor, thankfulness. Listen to 2

Thessalonians. But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the

Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation. And as I said last time, if you are not a

Christian and you're saying, am I elect or am I not? Why don't you settle it right now? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that will be a response to your election. Number four, salvation is by faith alone, so believe.

Look at verse 42. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember my baptism.

Jesus, remember that I was catechized. Jesus, remember my works. What works did the thief have?

So far, nothing. What merit? What could he bring to God?

He can't even get baptized. This reminds me of Luke 18.

Lord, have mercy upon me, the sinner. Nowhere to go but to God. That's what faith alone is.

Burdened with sin, empty -handedly going to Christ Jesus, believing his word.

Number five, when you die, you are with Christ, so rejoice. When you die, you are with Christ, so rejoice.

Notice verse 43. Today, you shall be with me in paradise. Now, how happy do you think the thief would have been with, today you'll be with me in purgatory?

Today you'll be with me in soul sleep. No, Psalm 116 is insightful.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his godly ones. The Hebrew there is carefully watched over by God is the death of one of his saints.

God's carefully looking over, watching as the spirit of God hovered over the waters for creation.

It's like the spirit of God hovering over the death of his godly ones. And here, it's absent from the body, present with the

Lord. For me to live is Christ and to die is what? Gain. I thought about that when

I was watching my mother die. I thought, you know what, if I didn't believe what the scriptures teach, death would be horrible, awful, wicked, and final.

There'd be no gain to death. But you think, you know what? Mom didn't want to leave.

She didn't want to die. But the second she closed her eyes and that last breath of death went out, gain.

Gain over the three kids that were there singing hymns. Gain over the family.

Gain over money. Gain over power. It's all gain. Can you imagine the thief on the cross, naked, ashamed, dying for sins that he committed, and then all of a sudden, dead?

And then it's gain. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 830 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.