"Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise" | Famous Last Words

Hello and welcome today to Trinity Sermons. In the sermon today we are continuing our

Lenten series, Famous Last Words, and we'll be hearing from Rob about the last conversation

Jesus has, one where he says to a criminal on the cross beside him,

Today you will be with me in paradise. Thanks for tuning in everybody and we hope that you enjoy.

God bless.

This is a reading from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 32, starting in verse 32.

Luke 23:32

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

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him.

Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us.

The other criminal rebuked him. Don't you fear God, he said, since you are under the same sentence?

We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.

Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Jesus answered him, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

The word of the Lord.

The Virgin Elizabeth II died on September 8th, 2022 at 310 p.m.

And when word of her imminent death got out to her family members, the members of the royal family,

they rushed to be by her side and not everybody could make it.

What we know for sure is that Princess Anne was with her when she passed away.

And so presumably Princess Anne was the one who had the very last conversation with Queen Elizabeth.

We don't know what that was.

Today, we come to the very last conversation that Jesus ever had with another human being.

These aren't necessarily Jesus's last words, but it was Jesus's last conversation.

And as opposed to having members of his family rush to be by his side and hear those last words

or to have royalty come and gather around him.

No, Jesus' last conversation was with a criminal, was with a bandit, a thief on the cross.

And though it is a very brief conversation, the one thing we do know is we do know what they talked about.

Because these words were recorded in the Gospels.

All four Gospels record this incident and these words were passed down to us through the centuries

so that we could open them up and read them today.

And as we read them, it becomes clear there's lots to learn here.

And today I want to share with you four particular things that we need to learn.

First, we are going to look at the people who were around Jesus.

Secondly, the perspectives about Jesus.

Thirdly, this plea that was made to Jesus.

And finally, the promise that was made by Jesus.

So we're going to just dive right into it.

And let's begin by looking at these first words that Jesus spoke, the people that were around Jesus.

I'm not sure if my little clicker here is working, I just want to get that going.

The first thing we learn were the people who hung around Jesus.

You know, they say you can tell a lot about a person by the company that they keep.

We can tell a lot about Jesus by the kind of company he kept throughout his life.

And it seems that whenever we read about Jesus in his life in the Gospels,

he was always hanging around what we might call the wrong sorts of people,

the sinners and the lost sheep of his community.

And this didn't sit so well with the religious people of his world.

They did not like the fact that Jesus hung around with these type of people.

So, for example, when the tax collectors and the sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus,

look what the religious people were doing.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they muttered and they said,

oh, this man welcomes sinners and he eats with them.

Now, you can understand how they would have felt because Jesus was supposed to be this great teacher.

He was supposed to be this holy man.

And here he was hanging around with some of the losers and the outcasts and the sinners of his society.

I mean, imagine, for example, if I went to downtown Toronto and I started having coffee with the prostitutes.

Now, some of you, you know, very graciously would say, oh, isn't that great?

Rob is going down and he's sharing the gospel with the prostitutes.

But I think that more than a few of you would probably say,

I always knew there was something a little off about that guy.

And you'd be on the phone with the bishop, I think, by the end of the day.

You see, religious people were really, really upset about the fact that Jesus spent time with these kind of people.

As the saying goes, bad company corrupts good character.

But here is the thing. This is the amazing thing.

Not only did Jesus like being around non-religious people, but non-religious people loved being around Jesus.

I mean, those the type of people who hung around Jesus, they didn't like the religious people.

They didn't like the church people very much. Church people, religious people creeped them out.

Church people, religious people made them feel bad about who they were.

They had to watch their language when they were around religious people.

They couldn't be themselves when they were around religious people, but it was different with Jesus.

You know, the other day I was taking an Uber and on the way to our destination, the Uber driver was talking and chatting.

He was hilarious. He was going on and on.

He had very colorful language, mind you, but he was going on and on.

And then he eventually asked me, oh, and what do you do?

And after I told him, you know, he clammed up and he just stopped talking altogether.

And he even apologized. Why? Because I was a religious person and therefore he couldn't be himself around me.

You know, a guy named Dan Kimball, a few years ago, he wrote a book called They Like Jesus, But Not the Church.

And it was a book that talked about how the younger generation actually has a great appreciation and admiration for Jesus.

But for religion, for the church, no, no, no, no, no.

And why? Because they knew what it felt like to walk into a church and feel the eyes of everyone staring at you.

They knew what it felt like to walk into church and be ignored, perhaps.

They knew what it felt like to come into church and hear the preacher's voice, right?

Speaking down at you. They knew what it felt like.

They knew what that felt like. And it made them feel small.

But when Jesus was around non-religious people, they didn't feel small.

They felt loved. They they didn't feel condemned.

They felt invited and they wanted to hear more of what Jesus had to say.

I'm just going to tell you a story. But do you remember this story?

Shortly before before Jesus was executed, he was traveling through a town called Jericho.

And in Jericho, there was a fairly notorious criminal, a crook.

Nobody really liked him. His name was Zacchaeus.

And everyone ignored him and hated him. But when Jesus walked through that town, when Jesus walked by that town,

he looked straight at Zacchaeus and he said, Hey, Zacchaeus, I want to have dinner with you tonight.

And and dinner was a big deal as it is now in the Middle East.

It was even more so back then when you had dinner with someone, you were saying, I want to I want to have fellowship with you.

I want to connect with you.

And of course, the religious leaders of that town were like saying, you have got to be kidding me.

Jesus is going to go hang out with Zacchaeus of all people.

And on top of that, you know what Zacchaeus did?

He went and invited all his non-religious friends and all his, you know,

sinner friends, the prostitutes, other tax collectors and other kind of ne'er do wells in the community.

And there was Jesus. He was sitting down with all these forgotten, lost and left out, outcast people.

He's talking to them about the kingdom of God.

And all the religious guys were out there wagging their finger at him saying, this guy, what is he doing?

Why is he doing this?

And so actually, Jesus had to go out and he had to go out and tell them why he was doing this.

And when he comes out and he speaks to him, he kind of lays out what you might call his like personal life mission statement, which was this.

He said, the son of man came to seek and save those who are lost.

That's why I'm here.

That's why Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

And don't you think it's interesting that even in death, Jesus is still seeking and saving the lost.

In his life, he hung around with all the wrong people.

And now quite literally in death, he is hanging around the wrong kinds of people.

All four gospel writers tell us that there were two other people that were crucified when Jesus died.

And then different gospel writers use different words to describe who they were.

For example, Luke's gospel, which we just read, he uses this Greek word, Kakourgos or Kakourgoi in plural to describe.

Now, that is a word.

It's made up of two words, Kaka, which means bad and Ergon or Ergos, which means work.

So if you were a Kakourgos, you were someone who did bad works.

And so these guys were criminals.

Now, in Matthew's gospel and Luke's gospel, they use a different word, and that is the Greek word, Lestace or Lestai.

And that, well, if you want to know what that means, all you got to do is you got to read the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Because in the parable of Good Samaritan, we read about a guy who was riding from one city to another and he was attacked by robbers.

And these robbers beat him up badly, stripped all his clothes off of him, stole everything that he had and left him bleeding and dying on the side of the road.

And the word used to describe who those people were in the parable of the Good Samaritan was the word Lestai.

So I want you to know that Jesus was being crucified with two criminals, two violent men who would not hesitate to leave you bleeding and dying on the side of the road.

And yet somehow it is just so fitting that Jesus final conversation is with a Lestace, is with a Kakourgos.

Even as he's dying, even as he can hardly breathe, Jesus is still reaching out to non-religious people.

It's really important for us to understand this, because in Canada, one of the fastest growing groups are what the statisticians call the nuns and the duns.

The nuns are those people who have no religious affinity whatsoever, no religious identification.

So when they're doing the census, when they're doing surveys and it says, are you a Muslim?

Are you a Buddhist? Are you a Christian? Are you Jewish?

They go, no, no, no. And they circle the very last one, which says none, none of the above.

That's why they're called nuns, whole lot more non-religious people than there ever, ever were.

The duns are those people who maybe at one point did go to church or they did go to synagogue or they did go to mosque.

But not any longer. They are done with it.

They have given up on church attendance.

They still may have an affection for Jesus, but they are done with church.

And so therefore, one of the things we have to get right here at Trinity, we have to get right, is we have to be a place where non-religious people can encounter Jesus still.

A place where people don't feel judged, but they feel welcomed.

A place where they don't feel small, but they feel loved.

Because when we stop reaching out with love and compassion to people, especially those who feel like the outsiders or the lost sheep,

when we stop doing that and we stop reflecting Jesus, we stop being the body of Christ, we stop being the church when we stop doing the things that Jesus did.

So just as a question here, you know, to people who know you, or put it this way, do the people who don't know Jesus feel comfortable talking to you?

Or do they always feel a little icky and a little weird by the time they're done with you?

There's probably going to be between 300 or 400 people come through here today, plus a couple hundred people maybe online that will join us throughout today and the week.

I just want to say, can you imagine what it would be like if all of us, all of us left this place committed to finding those people who were lost and then loving them and showing compassion to them?

Man, oh man, how our world would change, how our community would become a different place, because that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ today.

So anyways, that my rest of my points aren't going to be that long. But the first point I wanted to make was simply this, that this story talks to us about the people who were around Jesus.

But then it also tells us a bit about the different kind of perspectives that people have about Jesus, because you see every criminal or each of those two criminals had a different view, a different perspective on who this Jesus was.

And I think that the reason that Luke presents it this way is we're meant to compare and contrast these two perspectives and maybe even put ourselves there and say, which of these perspectives do I hold?

So, for example, one of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at Jesus and said, aren't you the Messiah?

Save yourself, save us. This criminal's perspective was that Jesus was a joke, that Jesus obviously was a weakling and a failure.

This is the guy after all who said to go and love your enemies. This is the guy who said to turn the other cheek. Are you serious? You really want me to do that?

You know, it's a total joke. And even today, there's lots of people who look at Jesus and they say, you got to be kidding, right? You can't be serious, right?

In fact, a lot of times people who watch our services online, they make comments and sometimes the comments are good and other times the comments aren't so good.

And, you know, this was a comment from a few weeks ago where someone just wrote fake. And I don't know if they were talking about me or they're talking about Jesus.

I don't know. But this next comment was clearly about Jesus. They're talking about what we were saying that he said that this whole story of Jesus, especially the resurrection, which we were talking about,

was a weak claim based on nothing. So I just want you to know that that is one perspective that people can have. This is weak.

This is fake. That Jesus was a failure and maybe so are we for believing in him. But there's another perspective and the other criminals see something different in Jesus.

Now, maybe he thinks, you know what? He thinks this. He thinks, you know, my life is hopeless at this point, right? I am going to die in a matter of hours.

I have been completely disgraced. I am completely defeated. But maybe I think he probably said this maybe word. Maybe there is a God who loves me.

Maybe there is a God out there who does care for the hopeless. Maybe there's a God who believes in giving a second chance or or or maybe there really is hope beyond this life.

And so he turns to Jesus and he calls out for hope. And I think that what Luke was doing when he wrote this all down, whether it was Christians or other people, that eventually anyone who ended up reading his gospel, they were supposed to ask themselves, you know, which of these two are you?

Which of these two perspectives do you hold? And actually, we're not that different from these folks on the cross. In some ways, for many of us, life did not go the way that we thought it was going to go.

And for many of us, there's been things we've done in life that we're truly embarrassed about and we truly regret and wish we could have a do over.

So in some ways, all of us have this choice, these two perspectives. Will you turn your back on him, ignore him and laugh him off as ridiculous?

Or will you turn to him and say, you know, he could be my only hope?

That brings us to the third thing we can learn from this. We learn about the people around Jesus and we learn about these perspectives on Jesus.

But thirdly, we hear this plea, this plea that was made to Jesus, this petition, if you will, to Jesus.

What was that dying criminals plea to Jesus? It was simply this.

He said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. It's so interesting. He didn't say, Jesus, I invite you into my heart.

Or he didn't say, Jesus, I confess that you are my personal Lord and Savior.

He said, no, Jesus, remember me. Jesus, remember me.

What does that mean to say Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom?

Well, I can tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean Jesus, when I am burning in hell and you are in heaven just from time to time, would you think of me?

That's not what this means. No, actually, the biblical idea of God remembering people is very powerful and very prevalent.

When God remembers someone, God is saving someone. To say, remember me is to say, God, help me.

It's to say, Jesus, rescue me. It's to say, Jesus, deliver me.

Let me give you some examples just in case you don't believe me. So when Noah's ark was floating on the floodwaters for days and days and days,

eventually we read that God remembered Noah and the wild animals and all the creatures that were on there.

And he sent a wind to start drying up the water. In other words, remembering meant saving here.

Or in Genesis chapter 30, Rachel, poor Rachel has been barren and she wants to have a child, but she can't have a baby.

Genesis 30 · chapter mention

So she's calling out to God, please, God, let me have a baby.

And then we read that God remembered Rachel and listened to her and enabled her to conceive.

Remembering means saving. Remembering means delivering.

Or in Exodus chapter two, Israel had been slaves in Egypt for like 400 years, but then we read that God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

And he sends Moses to be the deliverer. So that was this man's simple dying plea.

Jesus, remember me. Jesus, rescue me. Jesus, help me. Jesus, save me.

Jesus, set me free.

Do you think this guy understood the doctrine of the Trinity?

Do you think he had memorized the Nicene Creed?

Do you think he could explain to you the doctrine of justification by grace and faith alone?

Do you think he held a certain view of the Bible that Jesus agreed with?

Do you think he had even been baptized? No, none of these things. None of these things.

All this man had was faith the size of a mustard seed, faith enough to say Jesus, remember me.

And I would say, I don't know what it is you're in the middle of today.

What you're going through, some of us here are probably feeling lost in our own way.

We're going through some difficult times right now.

And we actually don't know how to pray.

We don't know what to say to God about what we're facing and what we're dealing with.

Well, I would encourage you, if you don't know what to pray, just pray this.

Say, Jesus, remember me. Jesus, save me. Jesus, help me.

That was this criminal's plea to Jesus. It can be our plea as well.

And that, of course, brings us fourthly and finally to the promise that Jesus made.

I think I probably need to prepare you because this is one of the most shocking things you'll probably hear today or this week or maybe even this year.

Because you see, we religious people, we think we've got it all figured out, right?

We know who's in and who's out and who's right and who's wrong and who's got the right doctrine, who's got the wrong doctrine, who's got the right interpretation and who's got the wrong interpretation, who is a Christian, who's not a Christian and all that stuff.

I got to tell you, this man had nothing. He had no doctrinal or no theological information or formation.

All that stuff that we have been fighting about for the last 2000 years, he had none of it, knew nothing of it.

And yet, do you know what Jesus says in response to his plea for help?

He says, today, you will be with me in paradise.

This is a man who has been a violent criminal his whole life and done nothing particularly good up to that point, at least nothing that we are aware of.

He's a criminal. He's a lacedace. He's a cacuragas. And he prays one prayer, Jesus, remember me. And Jesus responds by promising him paradise.

Paradise. Paradise is another way of talking about heaven.

Actually, paradise is a Persian word which refers to a garden, especially a beautiful walled off garden.

Often kings would have these great gardens that were just filled with all these wonderful creatures and water fountains and plants and flowers.

And they were just beautiful, beautiful place. According to this guy, Adam Hamilton, sometimes what a king would do to show appreciation for someone who had done something particularly heroic or particularly noble,

they would invite them to come and hang out in the king's garden in the king's paradise.

That's what paradise was. Jesus was giving us this picture of heaven.

Just quickly, according to the biblical story, we believe that God one day will make all things new.

Right. He's going to restore the earth. He's going to restore and resurrect all people.

And he's going to make every wrong right. That is our hope. And one day we will live on a new earth and we will have new bodies.

But until that day comes, until that day comes, those who die, enjoy what we call heaven.

Paradise. Paradise is not the final destination.

It's this beautiful garden resting place on the way to the new heaven and the new earth.

You know, you may have heard this too, but I've heard lots of stories of people who are dying.

They're on their death beds. And just as they're dying, they see these visions and whatever they're seeing and whatever they they're hearing, it causes them to light up.

It causes their faces to smile. It's almost like they see people or recognize people just as they're dying.

And their final moments, they have this joy and this happiness. I don't know. But maybe are they getting a glimpse of paradise?

Are we through them getting a little glimpse of paradise in the Old Testament?

Paradise was often associated with the Garden of Eden. Of course, that's the big famous garden in the Bible.

But unfortunately, we lost that garden. Human sin caused us to be kicked out of that garden.

Maybe even now we've lost the memory of that garden. But here is a very interesting thing.

Before Jesus was arrested, we're told he goes to pray in a garden.

It was the Garden of Gethsemane. And so there was a garden right there as Jesus is arrested.

But then we are told that when Jesus was crucified, he was crucified near a garden.

And then we are told that when Jesus was buried, he was buried in a tomb that was located in a garden.

And then when Jesus is raised from the dead, he comes forth from the tomb and Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener.

I think we can see what's going on here. Jesus is removing that curse, which banished humankind from the garden.

He's inviting us to return to paradise with him. And as he's hanging there on the cross, as he's dying, he's removing that curse.

And you know who the first person is that he invites to join him in paradise? A hardened criminal, a thief on a cross.

And if Jesus would invite someone like him into paradise, what does that mean for you? And what does that mean for me?

So do you see why these are such famous last words? First, they show us the people around Jesus, right?

Those whom the world ignores, Jesus loved and welcomed, and we must do the same.

Secondly, it shows us these two different perspectives on Jesus. You can either laugh at him or you can reach out to him.

That choice is yours today, as it always has been. And thirdly, it shows us these words, the simple plea that was made to Jesus.

Jesus, remember me. That is a prayer you can make today.

And fourthly, these words show us an amazing, amazing promise that we, when our lives come to an end, we too can experience the joy of walking in the king's garden.

And who doesn't want that? Thanks be to God. Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and we hope that you are able to carry the message from the sermon with you all week long.

And if you enjoyed the show today, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast, and we'll see you again next week.

Today's sermon was taken from the February 25, 2024 service at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.