March 15, 2026 | Remember Me

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him.

And when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.

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

And they cast lots to divide his garments.

And the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

There was also an inscription over him, this is the King of the Jews.

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, Are you not the Christ?

Save yourself and us.

But the other rebuked him, 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 he said to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined.

All that God has prepared for those who love Him.

These things are revealed to us through the Holy Spirit.

And Holy Spirit, we need that today.

We need you today.

To open the scriptures to us that they might burn in our hearts.

That you would graciously lead us to behold the glory of our Savior.

Lord Jesus, would you preside over this time?

That our eyes might behold our King in his beauty.

To the honor and glory, Heavenly Father, of your holy name we pray.

Amen.

Good morning.

It is just a delight to be back.

I'd like, if it's possible, for you to turn into your Bibles to Luke 23.

This past um days during Lent, uh this one passage has been so moving to me.

But especially two words that are found in this text.

We are standing at the feet, uh the foot of the cross of the thief.

And this moment happens when he looks at the Lord Jesus and he says the words Remember me.

There is piercing honesty.

There is such clear humility.

There is a profound awareness that he is not worthy of the kingdom of God.

He knows he's under a sentence condemnation.

He knows that what he has done and the reason he's being crucified is just.

Thousands of New Testaments were now coming in for the first time.

Because William Tyndale saw one thing.

I want the plow boy to know the gospel of Jesus.

Because the church is denying the gospel to the people.

This will not happen.

And they wanted Tyndale dead.

Because this was going to expose the heresy of the church and of the state in those days.

You come to know the gospel, it will expose the heresy, they'll lose control.

And the answer was no.

And so they thundered to find William Tyndale.

William Tyndale then learned Hebrew.

He literally, with Miles Coverdale, began to translate the Old Testament so that we actually had by 1525, 1535, 10 years later, literally the Bible ready to go.

In 1535, they captured William Tyndale.

They threw him into a dungeon.

For 17 months, they threw him into a dungeon.

And at the age of 42, this man, this wonderful man, this God-given man who brought the scriptures alive in England, was thrown upon a stake, strangled, and burned.

And his dying breath was, Oh Lord, let the King of England open the King of England's eyes to get the gospel out.

In those days, Henry VIII, who was a bit of a fickle, actually decided a year later Tyndale's prayer was answered and the Bible was released, called the Thomas Matthew Bible.

And for the first time that Bible was getting out.

But ten years later, in 1547, the priests still didn't know it.

The people were still not hearing the gospel.

And so what Archbishop Canterbury did, Thomas Cramer did, is began to assemble people to begin to write homilies, to put homilies down, sermons down, so that the stupid priests, the ignorant priests, I'm afraid they're abundant all over the country today.

And that's a side comment.

Just get up in the pulpit and read the homilies.

Just read the homilies.

And this is what this is what Edward VI said in his preface, King Edward.

He said, the ungodly doctrines that are happening in our country, to the great decay of Christian religion, and to the utter destruction of innumerable souls.

The first homily is on the authority of Holy Scripture.

The second homily was called the homily of the misery of all mankind and of their condemnation to death everlasting by their own sin.

I say this because what they saw is that they were not afraid of people dying.

They were afraid of people dying without a savior.

Because after death comes the judgment, where we will all stand before the Lord at the judgment seat.

Where the Lord Jesus will sit on that day, who comes to judge the living and the dead.

And he will separate the sheep and the goats, the righteous from the unrighteous, the just from the unjust, those who are in the book of life, in the Lamb's book of life, and those who are not.

And those who are not are going to go, as it says so strongly in Scripture, will go into the eternal fire, into eternal punishment.

And the righteous will go into eternal life.

That day is coming.

And people don't know.

People are perishing without knowing.

And suddenly this passion, they've got to know the gospel.

We've got to get the gospel out.

We've got to get this word out.

That's what we've got to do.

That these people might know and be saved in Jesus.

That was their passion.

Their desire wasn't like our American culture to entertain our culture.

Their job was the concern of the well-being of their immortal soul.

That it mattered.

And so what the second homily does, after establishing the word of God, by the way, this is exactly in our, just in case you wanted to know, this has been the teaching of the church straight down through the years.

The authority of scripture, scripture alone, was the first premise in the first homily.

And we say this in our catechesis and our teaching: Holy Scripture is God's word written, given by the Holy Spirit through prophets and apostles as the revelation of God and his acts in human history, and is therefore God's church's final authority in all matters of faith and practice.

Holy Scripture is God breathed.

For the biblical authors wrote under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This has always been the premise upon which we stand.

When the bishops met in Nigeria two weeks ago, the Anglicans all over the world, this was the premise.

We are standing upon the only foundation, Scripture alone.

We shall not budge and we shall not compromise it.

As hard as it is to hear in this culture, that scripture will be our basis of our foundation in everything we do, in everything we speak.

For we are not ashamed of the word of God.

It is the power of salvation to everyone who believes.

That's the nature of it.

But then came the second homily of which scripture teaches.

Scripture teaches us the condition of our soul.

And the condition of our soul is that we are in trouble.

We just began with the confession.

I don't know if you really saw the words you spoke just now, but we're in trouble.

And that is the nature.

It's the design of the scriptures to show the diagnosis of our soul.

Because I'm telling you, if you don't need to be saved, you're not going to need a savior.

Did you get that?

We're not going to ask for it.

And this is the deceitfulness of sin.

Deceitfulness of sin says, like Revelation 3.17 says, you say you're rich, you say you've prospered, you say you have need of nothing.

But the Lord Jesus declares, you don't know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

That we're no different than that thief on the cross.

None of us are any different than that thief on the cross who is deserving to die under a sentence of condemnation because that's the story.

All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

That's Romans 3.23.

All of us have sinned.

Do you believe that?

All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And so you've got this repeat all the way through, all the way through the scriptures, that we might know the state of our soul.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin?

Can the leopard change his spot?

Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.

That's Jeremiah.

Again in Jeremiah, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

Isaiah says in Isaiah 64, all of us are like one who is unclean.

All our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag.

Why is that?

Because our sins have separated us from God.

Our iniquities have torn us apart and hidden his face from us.

And so the scriptures just begin to debase us in this.

The Lord Jesus, to show us the experience of this, he says, Let me tell you, let me tell you the nature of the human heart, because it's out of the human heart that we see unclean, we see evil inside.

It's out of the heart of man that we have evil thoughts, Jesus said.

Mark 7, out of the heart comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft and murder, and adultery and coveting and wickedness and deceit and sensuality, promiscuity, strife, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

That comes, this is why, this is why we need a savior.

This is why he has come.

He does not want us to die in our sins, which is exactly what it says in John 8, 24.

Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

And so you've got this sound coming out, the echo of the thief.

I know my story.

The humility of it, I know that I have sinned.

And the thing about it that scripture just continues to resound is that we're actually in captivity with it.

So it'll say in Romans chapter 7, for example, I am captive to the law of sin and death in my members.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

And then you hear this cry out of Romans 7, wretched man that I am, who will set me free?

Who will set me free from this?

And you've got that testimony over and over in Scripture when suddenly we come into the presence of the Lord and the prophet, or like Peter says, I have sinned, I'm a sinner, I know it.

Please depart from me.

You want me to continue on this because I know you don't.

But the Bible's real.

The Bible is true.

And the reason it's true is because you're not going to know the power of the words that unto you this day is born in Bethlehem, the city of David, a Savior.

You would have no rejoicing unless you were crying out, wretched man that I am.

Who will set me free?

I'm in desperate need.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to go to the judgment.

I don't want the eternal fire for me, or for those I love, or for anybody I love.

Who will set me free?

That's the pulse of this scripture that we call the scriptures.

This is why we're we're playing with our culture.

Our culture is stealing our children, it's stealing our people.

It's taking us away from the scriptures.

Why is that?

Because this has got the power to rescue the soul.

This is what leads us to Jesus.

This is it.

There's a Bible study that I would have loved to have been at, loved to have been at.

On the road to Emmaus, the Lord Jesus meets the disciples.

He's completely in disguise, and what does he do?

He opens the scriptures to them and he shows them that in every corner of the scriptures you have got the person of the Lord Jesus.

This has been the whole story.

He does not want us to perish in the wrath to come, but to obtain salvation.

Always you've got this story in the scriptures that the Lord in his love wants to call us back.

We chose to rebel, we chose to walk our way, and his choice is to love us so much as to call us home, to invite us back.

And so every corner of the Old Testament, you're already hearing the sounds, He's coming, He's coming.

A beautiful passage in Isaiah 53 of why he's coming.

Listen to the sound of it.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.

And by his wounds, we have been healed.

We all like sheep have gone astray.

All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We've all sinned, all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way.

But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Do you know what this means?

This means that your sins upon this lamb upon that cross of Calvary, that cross is everything.

That cross is where the punishment for you is going to happen to him.

He's going to take it for you out of his great love for you.

And this is where you have got this sound coming out from, for example, Ephesians 2, where it says, You once were separated from Christ, alienated from the people of God, strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in this world.

But now, in Christ Jesus, you who are far off because of our sins have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Why is the blood of Christ so essential, so vital?

Ephesians 1:7 says, In Him, in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.

Ephesians 1:7

This grace has set us to a place where we can, in coming to Jesus, know the forgiveness of our sins.

And when we die and when we go to the judgment, no, no.

It'll not be because of our merit or of our work, but because of what the Lord Jesus has done that we shall be among the sheep and our names written in the Lamb's book of life for what he did, not for what we did.

But we trusted in him and this grace alone.

This is why we wait for him from heaven, because this Lord Jesus has delivered us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 1 10.

He's delivered us from the wrath to come.

He doesn't want us to suffer the wrath.

He's not destined us for wrath.

1 Thessalonians 5, 9 and 10.

He has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's what He's come to do for you, for me.

That's why every sound of the pages of Scripture is to lead us to Jesus.

It is not to entertain us, it's to bring us to Jesus.

And to see what the Savior has done for us, how he has laid down his life for us.

And it's by grace alone, this gift that comes to us, this amazing grace that saves a wretch like us.

We have got nothing to offer.

There's no merit inside of us, but just simply his abounding grace.

So listen to scriptures like this.

In Romans chapter 3, just like I said before in Romans 3.23, all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

Listen to 3.24, and all are justified freely as a gift by his grace.

Freely as a gift by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, whom God publicly displayed as a propitiation through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.

This is the glory of this moment.

Let me say it from Ephesians 2.

But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, Even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ.

Did you see that?

That's the power of new birth.

We were dead in our transgressions.

He made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you've been saved.

That story of grace.

That story, it's a gift.

It's not by works, it's not by merit of your own.

Oh, thank you, Lord.

It's a gift he's given.

It's a gift he wants to give.

It's a gift he desires to give.

And again, I say the same.

I'm not going to sing it for you because I don't want to torture you.

But you know it so well.

Amazing grace has saved a wretch like me.

Didn't say amazing grace has saved somebody who's kind of good, actually, sometimes, but actually, sometimes.

Amazing grace has saved a wretch like me.

I was lost.

Now I'm found as blind, but now I see.

I know my condition and I know my Savior.

Grace has come.

And all that has to happen is to extend your hands to receive it.

It's called faith.

It's just called trust.

Faith is a gift that comes from the Lord.

Faith comes from hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

That's why I'm speaking scripture over you today, because faith comes, faith comes.

The Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith as we hear the words of Scripture come to us.

As we hear the promises and the truth of Scripture come to us, suddenly we find faith, Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

Suddenly our senses, our God's senses, begin to open up.

And we become aware of who the Lord is.

We become aware of who we are, and we become aware of our need for Him.

Faith is that which sees, understands, and extends the hands to receive.

It's in that receiving that we wait for the miraculum to happen.

I love the word miraculum.

It means wonder.

Miraculous is cool, but miraculum is this wonder.

That's the wonder of when it happens to you.

That what you're hearing me say to you today is going to mean nothing if you don't know what I'm talking about.

But you can know by experience what this is like.

And this is why the great evangelists of these past 2,000 years, the great Jonathan Edwards, the great George Whitfield, the great Roland Harris, the great, all the greats that have gone before us, all they do is preach the doctrine of new birth.

You've got to be born again.

Just as Jesus said, if you want to see the kingdom of God, you've got to be born again.

If you want to enter into the kingdom of God, you've got to be born again.

And the thrust was we want this because we want you to live.

We want you to know the power of new life.

We want you to experience it.

So that when you die, you're ready to die and meet the one who has saved you.

T and I have often talked about this.

If people don't have time for Jesus in this life, why do they want to spend an eternity with him?

It's those who know him that long to be with him because of what he's done for them.

Let me describe that born-again moment for you.

There he is on the cross.

Oh, he knows his sin.

He knows that he is justly receiving the due penalty of his sin.

He knows there's no hope for him.

He looks to the other thief and says, Don't you fear God?

This man has done nothing wrong, but we have.

And then he turns to Jesus and he says the words, would you remember me?

When you come into your kingdom and you sit upon your throne, maybe someday you can just remember me.

So many of us are in that place of feeling like we're not seen, not known, not loved, not worthy of anything.

And he knows, like the prodigal, he knows he's not worthy to enter the kingdom of God.

He's not worthy.

He will go into the judgment, he will go into the eternal fire, he will be forever separated.

And he knows it.

And then that moment happens.

The Lord Jesus looks at him.

He doesn't say, I'm not gonna do that.

He doesn't even say, okay, I'll do that.

He looks at him and says, Today you will be with me in paradise.

That's called grace.

Undeserved.

Can you imagine the heart of that man at that moment?

Is that you?

Have you heard the Lord Jesus say today to you?

That's why these homilies were written, that everybody might know our Savior on that cross.

Wants to reach to us and save us from our sins.

If we would but know the grace, extend our hands and receive Christ to our life.

So many of us have loved ones who don't know Jesus.

So many of us have friends who don't know Jesus.

So much of our American culture isn't preaching Jesus but another Jesus.

But when we come, when we come to the Lord and open the scriptures and he teaches us this is the great love he has for us.

Do you know?

Do you know him?

Do you know Jesus as your Savior?

Have you given your life to him?

Have you received him?

Do you know that feeling of being born again in Christ?

If not, I beg of you.

This is the gospel we're to take it everywhere.

This gospel of grace, this thunder of the gospel.

And so the reformers came out of those days and they said five things: Scripture alone, Christ alone, received by grace alone, by faith alone, to the glory of God alone.

And they kept preaching it.

That everyone everywhere might know our Savior lives, our Savior reigns.

And what he did upon Calvary's Hill, the joy of what he did on Calvary's Hill for us, is that we might come to him and receive that blessing, the forgiveness of our sins, to be embraced by him, to be loved by him, to be made sons and daughters, and to be welcomed at that last day, when it comes to that last day, to be welcomed to be with him forever.

Our forebears cared for the well-being of souls, not like today.

But I beg of you, this needs to be our pulse, this needs to be our evangelism, it needs to be our outreach, it needs to be our life, that people come to know Jesus.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Let's just stay in this moment.

And just consider where we are.

If you open a door, I'll come.

I'll come to you.

And I will be with you.

And you will be with me.

In my house forever.

Don't live to me.