The Malefactor and the Martyr: A Testimony of Grace | Luke 23 & Acts 7 | BPFC Sermons

And this is a story of the thief on the cross as the father tends to call it.

Actually, the the A B has it a far better word, which is malefactors.

And a malefactor is not a thief.

A malefactor is somebody guilty of a capital crime.

It would be murder, it would be something against the state, and that changes and gives some explanation as to why they were crucified, because crucifixion itself wasn't for common thievery.

You actually had to be a threat to the state or have done something against somebody that matters.

So starting at verse 39.

And one of the malfactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss.

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

And then if we go to Acts 7, I'm going to read from verse 54 to the end, which is the stone and the steam and the first martyr.

So Acts 7, starting at verse 54.

When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on the on uh on him with their teeth.

But he being full of the Holy Ghost looked up steadfastly into the heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing in on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.

Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the young man's feet, whose name was Saul.

And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit.

And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this into their charge.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

May the Lord have his blessings to these readings of his word.

I don't have notes.

Nothing to worry about.

I'm not going to keep you overly long.

But I don't have notes.

And why haven't I got notes?

Because I want to speak from the heart.

I don't want to speak from a prepared speech where I've gone digging through tombs of books and websites and all sorts of information.

I want to lay this out.

We've got in those two readings two people two versions of people.

The one we'll call the thief on the cross, because that's how the world knows him, although the Bible says he's worse than that.

Who was there and was the first person to enter the kingdom of heaven with Christ when he entered.

That's what the Bible tells us.

He says, doesn't he?

So you've got the first person to enter the kingdom.

On the other hand, for our second reason, we have Stephen, who was the first martyr.

He goes in front of the religious elite and he proclaims his trust in Christ.

And when he's taken out and clustered a heretic, he looks up and he has this wonderful vision of Christ sitting on the right hand of God, sitting on the right hand, because that's the place of authority.

It's interesting when we talk about the two malefactors on the cross.

I was thinking about what I said last week when I said one is on the left and one is on the right, and I always thought the one on the right was the one that may have said, but that makes no sense.

If you think about it, because if Christ is in the center, the one on the right would have actually turned his head to the left, therefore facing evil.

Because if you think about it in the Latin, sinister, dexterous.

Sinister is the left because it's bad.

It literally carries it, it means literally our words.

Dexterous is good, right is good.

It's like when I was at school as a kid, you know, because I wrote with my left hand, I had to sit there with my hand, you know, and I was forced to write with my right hand.

Didn't work.

I said, I can't write with my right hand, but I thought you said when I was in the maintenance.

But if Christ, if if if this malefactor is on the left hand side, it sort of makes more sense to me because he turns to the right to see Christ and recognizes who he is, and he turns his back on the world.

It doesn't actually matter which one it is, but it's just one of those things that went through my head as I was reading, uh, reading around what the events are this week.

But the Feith on the Cross is an interesting one, isn't he?

You know, the I I don't know whether you've seen the Alistair Begg quote on YouTube, uh, where he goes, you know, where he talks about the Feith on the Cross, and he does it in quite a witty way, but it boils down to going, the Faith on the Cross had no time to repent.

He had no time to get baptized.

He didn't know anything about the doctrines of faith or uh uh communion or anything like that.

He had no time for that.

He just saw Christ, and that was enough.

He recognized Christ for what he was.

He saw the beauty of Christ, the innocence of Christ.

And he recognized him.

And on that recognition, his salvation was granted.

What does that do to people's theology?

You know, you get the Baptist that you can't be take communion as you baptize, you get the Church of England, you've got to be confirmed to take communion.

You've got to have all of these rules that make people jump through nowadays.

The man on the cross next to Christ didn't have any of that.

And maybe if we just offer Christ, it should be enough.

Christ is enough.

We've gone past the resurrection, we've gone through Pentecost by the time we get to Stephen.

Stephen, who is Stephen?

Just an old man who broke, as far as we can tell.

But he declares who Christ is, he puts his faith, he stands up, he's not ashamed to proclaim Jesus.

And he proclaims it in the most dangerous place possible in front of the religious needs.

And we got young Saul there who goes around and drags him in.

And they charge him, and he you read the Acts 7 piece, it gives you the whole story of what he says to them.

He literally gives his testimony of who Jesus is.

And as we read in that piece at the end of Acts, you know, when he's about to die, let me just turn to the piece.

When he's about to die and he looks up and he goes, um, and says, Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.

It's interesting when you think of the right hand of God, apparently it's a seat of power, it's a seat of authority.

When James and John, the Sons of Thunder, they go, uh their mother goes up to Jesus and goes, Can you place my sons at your left and right hand?

And Jesus goes, No, that's already taken.

And Stephen has this vision.

And he just says to God, Lord, and you know, it says, Here it goes, and they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

Is that not the same thing the feet on the cross did?

I wonder.

Is there a link there that we're missing?

And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, and he echoes Christ.

Don't lay this on them, Lord.

Don't let this sin be on their heads.

He forgave those who were going to kill him.

And then he falls asleep.

Falling asleep seems to be a word used for dying in the Bible.

And when Paul later goes on and talks about how many have fallen asleep, I think we can safely assume he's saying many have died.

I've always read it that way.

All of that's quite scary, isn't it?

You know, if I think the amount of work I put in here.

And I wonder at times whether it's enough.

We come here every Sunday night.

And sometimes it's quite disparaging.

I mean, Barry's been doing this since you were 18, thereabouts.

I've been doing this for 20 odd years now.

And sometimes it's it's it's like watching a tide coming out.

Sometimes there's a lot of people here, or a few people here, or there's just a couple, you know.

Um normally a bank holiday, which is what Easter is, is always like this in my experience.

Everybody is away, you know, most people go away bank holidays, it's just the way of the world.

And you wonder whether it's worth it, don't you?

1 Corinthians 15 tells us let a man examine himself.

What does that mean?

Are we fit?

Yeah, it's a meat and bread and bread and the juice in this case.

Does that matter?

What does it mean to examine yourself?

And I always took it that it meant, you know, make sure that what you're about to take you actually think you should take.

You're acceptable to God in some way that you're allowed to take it.

And I'm not sure that's true.

The Church of England have a prayer and it goes, feast on him in your heart with thanksgiving.

What are we giving thanks for?

You know, if it was just for the forgiveness of sins, we would do this every every day, every week.

We only do it once a year.

Some churches do it weekly, some do it monthly, some do it a couple of times a year.

I wonder when you get like me and you you struggle.

You read the Bible, you read the books around the Bible.

I spend a lot of time.

For those of you that are on social media, you'll see I have an awful lot of activity on there.

Um and I'm constantly churning out stuff on almost a daily basis.

And I don't know what the results are.

And you wonder, is it worth it?

And I wonder what the thief on the cross thought when he recognized Christ, and Christ said to him, Tonight you'll be with me in paradise.

What did the other guy think?

We don't know, we're not told.

There's an awful lot in the Bible we're not told.

We surmise, we we we assume, and that's a very dangerous thing to do with the word of God is to assume something.

We're meant to be like Jacob, we're meant to wrestle with the word of God.

And you may wonder where I'm going with this ramble, or as some of you kindly put it, this waffle.

Um and yeah, what I'm going on with this is this validates everything.

If you think you're not doing the right thing, this is for you.

This validates you.

If you think that Christ doesn't care about your other word, this is for you.

This is for people like me that spend our time pouring over this, maybe getting it wrong, reading different books, trying to work out what's actually going on.

This is for people like me.

This is for people like you if you're going to a place where you get daily life thrown at you and then contradicts everything that the Bible says, and you're pulled one way and the other.

This is for you.

This is not for the perfect people.

This is not for the great and the good.

Christ didn't come for the great and the good.

Christ came for people like you and me, the doubters, the strugglers, the ones that fight to get all of life, the ones that wonder what it's all about, and we're trying our best to figure out what's going on.

Because when you you turn to Christ as a Christian, that first time you accept him as I use a king and savior to give the technical terms.

Lord and Master is the word I tend to use.

It signals something to the world, and it's but it signals something inside your mindset as well, how you think about things.

And suddenly everything that the world says is good becomes dull.

It doesn't become interesting anymore.

All that stuff that I used to do before I come, I took Christ as my Lord, doesn't interest me anymore.

It's not the same.

Life becomes dull and boring.

This becomes exciting, that becomes more than just bits of bread and fruit juice, grape juice.

This is love and mercy and justice rolled into one.

The bread represents a justice that God exacted and extracted on his son.

The blood is the the juice represents the pouring of that blood, the shedding of that blood.

And the world now has to contend with God.

And that means we have to contend with the world.

No longer are we the malefactors on the cross.

If you take this, you're suddenly a stephen.

When we go out there into the world, we have to act like a step, not to be ashamed of Christ, because we're ashamed of Christ to proclaim his name.

He's going to be ashamed to proclaim our name in front of his father.

So the gospels tell us.

So that's what this is.

It's a gift.

It's a gift to keep us going.

It's a gift to keep us going.

Renew us for another 12 months unless I do it again this year.

And I'm tempted to do it again this year.

It's a revival of the Spirit by the Spirit.

It's a refreshing of the soul.

It's a reminder that God cares so much for you.

That Christ died for your sins.

I know other traditions say that.

That change has already come to the same thing.