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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Clifford Goldstein

The Thief on the Cross

A while back, I was in country, overseas, and I thought I was going to have a free morning.

And I'm laying in bed and early morning there's a knock on my door.

And it's the union president and change of plans and in 2 hours he's going to pick me up and he wants me to preach at a woman's prison.

Now, that's not generally the kind of environment I'm used to preaching in.

And this was very, everything in this place was last minute, last minute, it was a little frustrating.

You know, you go over to Germany, you're going to preach in Germany, and a year before, the Germans want to know, what do you want for breakfast?

You know, what color do you want the towels in your hotel room, you know, a year before?

And in this place, this place, the last minute, you know, so he's sitting there telling me, You know, so I didn't have anything prepared.

And as he's talking to me, I'm starting to get a little nervous.

And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, and then for some reason, I'm waiting.

And this is the story of the thief on the cross.

The thief on the cross that just kept coming to me, why he's talking to me about the plan.

So finally he left, so I had 2 hours to put a sermon together and get dressed and get ready to go and preach.

So he comes and I go and I preach this in a very, Very different environment to say the least in this country I was in, a woman's prison.

And anyway, as I preached it, I thought, wow, you know, there's more.

And I always thought I understood the story and I guess on 1 level I did, but when I got done preaching to these people, I got so blessed by it, I thought, you know, I'm going to come back, I'm going to refine it a little.

I mean, to try to throw something together in a couple hours is just you know you could always go back.

That's why I told someone a little while ago, Sabbath school is so painful for me, because I see the Sabbath school quarterly in print.

And, you know, that's 2 years since I've really looked at it.

And in 2 years, I would make a lot of editorial changes and yet it's way too late past that.

I guess at 1 point you just keep doing it and doing it forever, I guess at some point you gotta stop.

So anyway, what I want to do is I want to share just some of the things that I got from this story.

Because generally I'm the kind, if something encourages me or blesses me, my instant thought is I want to share it.

So I guess it's kind of fortunate that I edit the Bible study guy because I get a chance to share it with probably a larger audience than I might in most situations.

Jesus, having riled up the religious leaders once too often was eventually betrayed, mocked, beaten, tortured, sentenced to death, hung on the cross.

And yet it's amazing, It's amazing to me, especially in a day and age where there's so much skepticism about the authority of the scripture, even among professed Christians.

I'm not talking about the world out there, you know, of course you wouldn't expect them to believe it.

If they believed it, they'd be Christians.

But even among church members and especially the scholarly world, how much skepticism about the Scriptures.

And yet, time and again, how often did Jesus say that the scripture must be fulfilled and even Jesus talking about his own death the scripture must be fulfilled so on 1 level as horrible as all this is it's Scripture being fulfilled.

Now let's pick up the story, and I want to focus mostly on Luke.

And let's pick up Luke 23, starting at verse 32.

2 other men, both criminals, were also let out with him to be executed.

Okay, so now we're being introduced to the thieves on the cross.

When they came to the place called the skull, there they crucified him along with the criminals, 1 on his right, the other on his left.

Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

And they divided up his clothes by casting lots." Again, this is fulfilling scripture.

The people stood by watching and the rulers even sneered at him.

They said, he saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ, the Son of God, the Chosen 1, the Christ of God, the Chosen 1.

The soldiers also came up and mocked him.

They offered him wine, vinegar, and said, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

There was a written notice above him which read, this is the king of the Jews.

Okay, so this is the immediate background here.

Jesus was brought to the cross, he's placed on it, he's being mocked by both the Romans and by the religious leaders.

And it's in this context that Jesus meet, that we first meet these thieves.

But now 1 of them appears, but now they appear again.

And 1 of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him.

Now, we don't know a lot about these men.

They were criminals, they were robbers, we were told what did they steal, well you know I don't know, I don't know but I'm telling something even in a the Romans were nothing if they weren't sticklers for law, law, law, law, the Roman law, I mean we our law has been influenced by the Roman law.

And even under the harsh Romans, they're not gonna give you the death penalty.

They're not gonna hang you on a cross for stealing, say, a few loaves of bread to feed your kids.

They're not going to, you know, like some countries, they'll chop your hand off or something.

The Romans weren't going to do, they weren't going to hang a petty criminal on the cross like that, a petty thief.

So my guess is that these guys were probably repeat offenders.

So there they are, the 3 of them dying together, and then 1 of them starts to mock Jesus.

You know, if you are the Christ, save yourself and us.

Now it's interesting too, what he's really doing, this thief, he's just repeating the words of the crowd.

He's repeating the words of the religious leaders.

See, he was a Jew, so he mocked Jesus as the Messiah, like the religious leader.

Now it's funny, How did the Romans mock him?

So the Jews mocked him, and the thief mocked him as Jews would, mocked him in a religious sense, thinking he's the Messiah of the Jews.

The Romans didn't care about a Messiah, it didn't mean anything to them, it was Jewish stuff.

So they're mocking him as the Messiah and the Romans are mocking him, you know, in a political context.

The Jews are mocking him in a religious way, the Romans in a political way.

So here was Jesus, though he was both Messiah and the king, hanging there being mocked by these people as both.

Talk about 1 day having to eat your words.

But so 1 thief starts mocking him and then what next?

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 Wow, we receive the due reward of our deeds.

They weren't stealing bread Okay, they weren't shoplifting at the local Walmart here But this man has done nothing wrong.

I don't think he had a clue As to how profound those words were.

Now what's interesting, according to Matthew's version, and they don't contradict, Matthew just focused on what happened in the beginning.

Matthew said that in the beginning, they both mocked him.

The Luke version ignores that and just focuses on what happens later.

So they both mocked him and then suddenly this 1 obviously has a change of heart.

You know, do you not fear God seeing you are under the same condemnation?

And we justly, I mean, I don't know, it's maybe, I guess I don't wanna, I can't take my time and place and impose it back then, but you know, what do you steal that makes you worthy of not just the death penalty but you know dying on the cross And yet he's saying we deserve this.

Anyway, 2 thieves, 2 criminals sentenced to death, but 2 completely different attitudes.

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The Thief on the Cross

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