The Hardest Prayer | Luke 23:32-49

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, happy Thursday.

Happy Thursday.

Sure, why not?

We're so excited we can hardly stand it.

Make this day the best Thursday ever?

Okay?

And uh and by the way, it could be the

end of the day.

Yeah, I think I think Thursday doesn't get very good attention,

right with you. I mean, there's Monday. Everybody hates Mondays. Yeah,

Wednesday's hump day. You're like, hey, we're over the hump now,

we're halfway to the good part of the week. Friday

or Fridays, thank god, it's Friday.

Weekends are great.

Weekends are amazing.

So really, Tuesday and thursdayild.

We just forget forgotten. So hey, it's time for us

to give honor to whom honor is due. Thursday's been

standing there for us, Thursday. If it weren't for Thursday,

we wouldn't have anything to do between Wednesday and Friday.

A little buddy Thursday. All right, all right, hey, today

we are before we jump into the what is titled

as the hardest.

Prayer, hardist prayer, how about that.

Okay, we have a segment and this is Stump the Pastor. Oh,

Stump the Pastor is actually something that we actually collect questions.

We enjoy them, and we encourage you to email us

right now. So go to info actually send an email

to info at the Bible guys dot com. It'll get

to us. Or just comment on YouTube and we'll try

to grab your question right there.

I love questions like this. I love like just open

forum Q and a kind of stuff.

Do you enjoy that, yes, Well, it shows that people

are thinking, yeah, and it shows that people care and

they're like, hey, I have a question about the Bible

and I really want to know this answer.

Yeah. Several times, a couple times a year. Usually I'll

meet with our high schoolers and just take an hour

or two and say, hey, it's just any question you

want to ask. And it's amazing how they they'll stay

sometimes for hours and hours just as questions. So I'll

tell them I'll stay as long as your pans will

let you stay. And so then they started this as

then all of a sudden, Mom and Dad are all

standing around. We got the crowd of people stand around

just asking Bible questions. Done it a few times with

our young adults. We got one hundred and something young

adults in our church, and and we do the same

thing there. We gotta fly flying around us, and so

do the same thing with our interns and residents will

do it. I just I love it when people are

using their minds. They've come across the thing, they're not

sure what the answer is. And instead of just giving up,

like I think a lot of people have grown up

with a religious view or belief of don't ask questions.

It offends God, right, Instead, I love it. The Book

of Jeremiah says, come now, let's reason together. Says the

Lord God wants us to use our minds. He God

invented your mind. That's right, he did, right, and he

knows that you have this ability to have big questions.

And he's not offended when we have questions. So I

love it. I love this segment. And so what's what's

our questions?

But by the way, did you I learned recently learned

that Chad is more reluctant to let me do a

public Q and A than you.

Our executive pastor, executivestor. Our executive pastor is very protective,

you know, why because he's because you go rogue.

Well he's not. He's not afraid of my theology of

the answer. He's he's afraid of my diplomacy lack of it. Right, So,

so so he's like, he's like, and I'm not even

I'm not even sure afraid is the word.

He's just a little bit more cautious. Cautious. He's like,

we don't we don't really know if Chris is going

to be you would do fine.

Because we all know that you're diplomatic. Well, it's definitely

clear that you're way more diplomatic than.

Me at times at times, Okay, I can also be

a bigger jerk than you, so right at times? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

So my lows are lower and my highs are higher.

My lows are lower, my eyes are higher. Yeah yeah,

that's pretty good. All right. Yeah, So this this question

is written by Bill T.

Bill Bill T.

Yes, Hey, Bill Yes, not Bill T, but.

Bill Bill T. Okay.

So he writes this, is there a distinction in the

Bible between justifiable and unjustifiable anger? Can Christians express anger

in a righteous way as Jesus did in the temple,

or should all anger be avoided entirely. Yeah.

Well, I'm afraid to answer this question at but Bill

to be mad at me.

But I'm bumping. Ah, I see what you did there? Yeah,

so yeah, I mean, like, so I remember a sermon.

You know, some sermons you remember forever, right, I don't

know if you do. I do, But I remember a

sermon that Bill Heibels gave at a leadership summit back

in like two thousand and six, and so we were

actually at the leadership summit and he actually talked about

righteous indignation, and he talked about how Jesus had righteous

indignation and how he flipped over the money changer's temple

or money changers tables at the temple.

So and by the way, because made a whip.

Yeah, because that's correct he did. Because that's been mentioned twice.

We might as well at least explain that way.

Sure.

So Jesus actually in the Bible got angry, and he

got angry at the fact that he actually said, you

have made my house into a den of thieves, right,

And he was referring to people who were abusing what

it was like selling sacrifices and making a profit, unreasonable profit.

Oh yeah, it was exorbitant. They had kind of a

monopoly on the If you were traveling hundreds and hundreds

of miles to the temple, normally you wouldn't bring your sacrifice.

You would take that perfect sacrificial animal. You would sell it,

bring the money to Jerusalem and buy another animal that

you could do rather try to bring it the whole way. Well,

what was happening was the money changers and then the

people running businesses at the temple. They were you know, five, six, ten,

twenty times more expensive than what you could have gotten

or village for the same animal. And it's because they

had a monopoly on it. They were abusing people just

to make money. And it really made Jesus man. So

he makes a whip, he clips over the tables and

sets all the animals free and spills all their money

everywhere and really chews them out.

Yeah, well, I mean Jesus with a whip is not

a common painting. Yeah.

Usually it's usually it's like a sad Jesus with long

hair and blue eyes looking up into the Caucasian Yeah. Yeah,

the stars, and he's holding the lamb and hugging a child.

Right.

I don't usually think of Jesus with his sleeves rolled up,

whipping people, flipping tables.

And none of that. But like he was a strong man. Yeah,

he is a carpenter, right, and so he was a specimen.

I mean we know that just from the physical uh

you know, brutality of even you know what he endured

and he endured it, right, So yeah, so I mean

this the picture would be a strong muscular man, angry

with a whip, flipping over tables. And so I almost

wonder because again, everything to me is Hollywood, not for

the sake of Hollywood, by the way, for the sake

of reality. Right, So Hollywood, meaning when I say Hollywood,

I mean like I can picture the whole entire scene

right now, That's what I mean. But I don't mean

Hollywood fake or Hollywood dramatization. I don't mean any of

those terms. When I say Hollywood.

What I mean you see a movie.

I could see this being played out. And so oftentimes

when I Hollywood, I as a narrative, I will I

will try to suppose or wonder and think to myself, like,

did somebody try to oppose him? Like? It doesn't say so, right,

It does not say that somebody came up to him,

and he pushed them out of the way. Or three

men were thinking about charging him, and then he held

up the whip and looked at them, and they knew

he was serious, and so they backed off. Right. But

I'm sure those things happen, right, because guess what, You

don't come into a place and destroy people's profitability in

their livelihood without opposition, You just don't, Right. I'm sure

they caught him by surprise, and I'm sure that everybody

knew who Jesus was. I mean, they certainly knew who

he was, so there might have been a fear of like,

I don't know what to do right.

Now, Yeah, just get out of here, Like I.

Don't know, I'm a nobody. I'm a guy who's making

a profit off animal sacrifices. And here's that's and I

know who that is. That's Jesus, and so I don't

know what to do right now. But those are the

kind of things when I say, Hollywood is things I

think to myself, like, how did that play out? Yeah,

because certainly people had to have a reaction to Jesus anyway.

Well. In Ephesians four twenty six is it twenty six?

Ephesians four something, let me find it. Ephesians four four.

I know, Ephesians four thirty two. I know if He'sans four.

Twenty oh, yeah, there you go for twenty six. And

don't let sin, and don't sin by letting anger control you. Right,

don't let the sun go down while you're still angry.

For angry anger gives a foothold to the devil. Another

translation says, be angry and sin not and then don't

let the sun go down, right, and so, so anger

isn't the same, right right. Anger is just an emotion.

Where it becomes sinful is when it's self centered. I'm

angry at you because you offended me. If you just

if you just let that fester. This why I says,

don't let the sun go down on your anger. You

let that fester, it's going to turn into bitterness. This

bitterness gives a foothold to the devil. So, uh, you

talked about righteous indignation. Man, If somebody was coming through

the door to hurt my wife and my daughter in

the middle of the night, that's correct. Believe me, they're

going to get the full force of Jeff right. And

it's the anger then is driven by the threat to

what I love so dearly. So first of all, I

have to I have to really make sure I love

the right things. It's not just me, it's not just

my happiness and my comfort. But I love my wife,

I love my daughter, I love my freedom, I love right.

There's a lot of those things, and so because of

that major threats to those things. It's not a sinful

thing to have that anger feeling, that that rush come

into you saying I need to defend this. The Bible

talks multiple times that it's responsibility the strong to protect

the weak, to speak up for those who don't have

a voice, to protect those who can't protect themselves. Right.

So the Jesus talks about at one point, you know,

the kingdom he's putting violent men will have to seize it, right,

And he's not talking about like violence like you and

I think of blood and gore, but by men, men

that just stand up in their strength and grab a

hold of this thing. So I'm always cautious when people

start to ask is it sometimes okay for me to

be angry? Because on occasion I'm not saying in bill

Ty is this guy, But on occasion it's people who

have trouble with their anger and they're trying to justify

it and win an argument with their spouse later, right, or.

If they're an angry person in general, they may be

generally concerned about their demeanor.

If you are having trustworthy people, spouses, children, friends, saying, boy,

you seem like you're pretty angry lately, then maybe you're

starting to cross the line between being angry and sinning.

Not right, you need to get back to that. Don't sin.

So let your anger drive you to do something good.

Right So, right now, for instance, one of the ministries

you're really focusing a lot on lately has been child trafficking,

right right, So how does that make you feel? You

drive through those neighborhoods, and you know what's happening in

Dominican Republic. Their parents are selling their own children.

I'll actually make a statement. When I went on a

tour and I actually saw I saw it with my eyes.

I saw it, I saw the child, I saw what

was happening and the men protecting it, and I saw

a person go up and inquire about it. I have

never felt more anger in my entire life, in my

whole life, and I've gotten angry about a lot of

things I've never felt more anger than that.

So God is not calling you to be Batman becomes

some vigilante, right, come swooping in, kick the doors down, necessarily,

But that anger has driven you to start helping build

a system to rescue those kids, raise the money through

transform one, and actively begin working towards a good solution.

And that may not be repaying evil with evil, right,

it's repaying evil with good. And so how do you

how do you go solve that?

So which which, by the way, since you already mentioned it,

I wasn't going to say it, but by the time

this goes on the air, we will be two weeks

out from our five k. And if you want to

make a small.

Donation or a big donation or a big donation, we

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I would. I would love it if if somebody who

normally isn't a part of heritage, because you know, a

lot of people who listen to this are part of

our community anyway, and they're like, I have already heard

about this, Yes, but there has to be.

Thousand, thousands of people who don't know what you don't know.

What we're talking about. Would you do me a favorite?

Go to Heritage Church dot com slash five k. Everything's

on there, so if to donate or watch the video

find out more about it herdichurch dot com slash five

k making donation, that'd be awesome.

Yeah. So if you're asking the question because you've had

people tell you you seem really angry lately, then let

that be God's way of saying, hey, you're starting to

cross the line. Yeah, right, don't use Bible versus to

justify your anger. But if you're feeling a holy anger

or a righteous indignation towards some kind of wrong thing

in society, and you're wondering at my sinning, well no,

you're not sinning necessarily, as long as you direct that

in a way that causes you to then address this

issue in a healthy, godly way. Right. So people are

not your enemy. Satan is our enemy, and so we

don't fight people. We fight the actions of Satan in

society and we did so. Yeah, it's great, it's great. Hey, thanks,

good question, Bill, that's great.

All of those answers are people, you know, people wonder

about those, so that's why they're called stump the pastors

because because and sometimes stump the pastors are I don't

know right right because depending on the question. But this

is something I've heard so many times, So thanks Bill

for asking.

I've thought several times it would be fun to do

Stump the pastor week. Oh if we could get enough

people to write in questions, if we could get like

one hundred questions, we could do three or four day

let's let's let's.

Let's announce it right now after the Dangerous Prayers series. Yeah,

let's do a five day stint where we do a

stump the pastor, you know.

Not make the whole episode.

I was going to say, the one question may not

carry us the whole episode.

Yeah, but if we get if we get a hundred questions,

we could just filter through them and find the ones

that would fill up the twenty five minutes every day.

I think it'd be fun.

Yeah, it'd be fun. Okay, So there it is. There's

your assignon. People. If you want to see this series

come into fruition, then comment on YouTube right now, or

comment online or email us at info at the Bobble

Guys dot com and we would love to get your

stuff to past their questions.

Cool, well that's neat. Well there you go. All right,

Well I get permission from des right, right, because we

only have we only have the appearance of being in

control of this podcast, but we know who the real

puppet master is. Yes, yep, you know.

Even no matter how angry we get, we are still

commanded to forgive Ooh, you're right. And that leads us

to this next segment, or this next passage where Jesus

forgives Yeah.

Well, good transition.

That was actually a good transition. That was not a

bad transition.

No, that was a very good one. So we're going

to pick up on at Luke chapter twenty three, verse

thirty two. It says to others, both criminals were led

out to be executed with him talking about Jesus right,

and when they came to a place called the Skull

or Galgatha, they nailed him to the cross, and the

criminals were also crucified, one on his right and one

on his left. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they

don't know what they are doing, and the soldiers gambled

for his clothes by throwing dice. The crowd watched and

the leader scoffed he saved others, They said, let him

save himself, as if he really is God's Messiah, the

chosen One. The soldiers mocked him too by offering him

a drink of sour wine. They called out to him,

if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

A sign was fashioned above him with these words, this

is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals

hanging beside him scoffed, So you're the Messiah? Are you

prove it by saving yourself and us two while you're

at it? But the other criminal protested, don't you fear

God even when you've been sentenced to die. We deserve

to die for our crimes. But this man hasn't done

anything wrong. And then he said, Jesus, remember me when

you come into your kingdom. And Jesus replied, I assure

you today you'll be with me in Paradise. And by

this time it was about noon, and darkness fell across

the whole land, until three o'clock the light from the

sun was gone, as suddenly the curtain in the sanctuary

of the temple was torn down the middle. Then Jesus shouted, Father,

I entrust my spirit into your hands and with those words,

he breathed his last.

Wow, there's a lot in there.

Yes, well, I think the big, the dangerous prayers Father

forgive them.

Yeah, that is definitely the focus of the topic. Uh.

And we can go on forever about everything else that's

in there. Uh. But I don't know why. I just

got super emotional thinking about the criminal. You know. He

you know, here's this criminal who doesn't have a name,

just known as the criminal.

Yeah, and one day we're criminal one and criminal two.

Right, We're gonna get to heaven. And I'm you know,

there's a lot of questions. I think that God will

indulge us with these questions. I do, I do. I

think I think we'll have time, obviously sure to explore

every question that we have and uh that we have

now on this earth. And I think that, uh, I

I would love to talk to this criminal. The the

idea that that one of them, you know, is scoffing

and then the other is completely recognizing that in belief

that he's the son of God and saying, don't you

fear God? He's saying, how dare you talk to God

this way? I mean, he is he is a believer,

you know, keep in mind that. It did say that

there were so many people there at that what am

I What am I trying to say?

Pass Over week, Yes, pass over fester. The city was

just it was bursting at the seams at this point.

And it said that, It said many were there because

they had heard that he had raised Lazarus from the dead.

So his popularity had grown to such a degree to where,

you know, people had heard his claims to be the

Messiah at this time. You know, he held nothing back

and so he had done nothing wrong. Everybody knew it.

This is even a testament of the public, you know.

You know sometimes when when something happens and there's a patsy,

it's like you can't sort of I just watched it yesterday.

I watched the movie where everybody knew that what was

happening was unjust and this person who was the patsy

didn't deserve to get fired from his job. But everybody

knew it. Everybody knew it, but nobody wanted to talk

about it because everybody was afraid of the authorities. That

happened just last night, and so here it is. This

man makes a statement that represents like everybody here knows

that this man is in a sense everybody here knows

he's done nothing wrong, and this man recognizes Jesus. Anyway,

that's not the focus of the dangerous prayer.

I want to point out one interesting thing to me.

This guy on the cross, maybe in this specific moment

in history, had the most faith of maybe everybody else

on the planet, because Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God,

and when you're naked and nailed to the cross, the

kingdom seems like it should be over.

Everybody lost hope, all the disciples lost.

Hope, and only the guy on the cross next to

him said, I still believe in your kingdom.

Is that an original thought right now?

Isn't that neat?

Because that's incredible. Yeah, that's incredible.

Peter Peter lied and denied. James and the Mary's they're

they're standing back in the crowd fear.

Yeah, and uh and uh. Everybody can't believe or understand. Yeah.

And it says that they didn't understand, they didn't remember

his words, they didn't know what was happening. And it

says only after he was resurrected then they remembered the

promise he told them, right, So they had lost all hope,

they were out of they were motivated, out of fear.

They all ran, they were all in hiding. Wow.

And then and this guy, this one guy said, Jesus,

remember me when you show.

Up in Paradise before the veil rents in two before

the earthquake. Is the Roman soldier?

Yeah, made a statement and the thing he had heard

Jesus say was his father forgive them. They don't know

what they've done. And he had no hope for forgiveness

except that.

Wow.

Right, and then he what a thought? Yeah, whats so thought? Anyways,

Jesus says, I really want.

To meet this guy. You really want to meet this guy.

I'm going to find this guy.

So yeah, hey, maybe you guys have been neighbors in heaven.

Maybe yes, maybe so maybe God will honor that. So

so the so the prayer Father forgive them for they

don't know what they are doing. Charlie Kirk's wife prayed that.

Yeah.

Just just we saw it all over social media and uh,

what an unbelievable thing. So the nation right now reacted

and are marveling at the fact, like, how can anybody

forgive the shooter of your of your of your husband. Yeah,

and uh, and we've heard stories like this. I mean,

it doesn't even have to be Charlie Kirk's wife, which

is in recent news, but it could be you know, like, uh,

I'm sure you've heard this. Have you? Have you read

or seen YouTube or even documentaries where uh, the the

victim's wife forgives the criminal. I've actually seen it documentary

where they became best friends and she led him to

christ and he was on death row and she mentored

him and walked him through and he was there for

a couple of years, and eventually she was a part

of the appeal to get him off of death row. Yeah.

I mean, like, which is an honest it's hard to

wrap your head around that kind of thing. So forgiveness.

And I've told my story many times, coming from a

life of abuse and those kinds of things early on,

my biological father was a very bad man before he

became a Christian and my dad adopted me and my

life changed, right, so everything was different between my biological

father and my dad. And my dad just went to

heaven here recently, so I missed him. I just ran

across some photos of him in my desk yesterday. Thought

about him for a while, but my biological father was

violent towards my mother and I, very very abusive for

a very long time. For thirty something years, I never

heard anything from him at all after he gave him.

After he gave me up for adoption, one day he

reached out. He sent me an email said that he'd

seen all my messages online, seen what God was doing

in my life, and he said, I hope that you

believe in redemption because God's changed me over the last

several years. He got sober and gave his life to Christ,

and his life had changed, and he said, I hope

you can forgive me. So then when I met him,

met him one time, he confessed how he treated me

and my mom and that it was wrong, and that

he said, you know, I don't think you could have

been who you grew up to be if you'd stayed

in my life. You know, I would have destroyed that.

But God had to take you away from me, and

that was the best thing. But I hope you can

forgive me. And I told him the words, I do

forgive you, But I don't know that I felt like

I forgave him until I found out after that conversation,

maybe thirty minutes later he told me that he was

dying of cancer and asked me to do his funeral.

And then I was faced with that when he did

die of cancer, I was faced with that whether or

not I was going to do his funeral. And I

realized forgiveness, like Charlie Kirk's wife just did or whatever,

publicly is not saying what you did is okay, correct,

it's not. It's not saying ah, no, big eie. It

was a big deal. It was a devastatingly big deal.

This is the most devastating thing. You nearly ruined my life,

right kind of thing, and then your mom. But what

I realized was in Romans chapter twelve, he says, don't

repay evil with evil, repay evil with good. And then

he says, because Vengeance's mind says the Lord, I will repay.

What I realized is forgiveness really is just me giving

up my right to prosecute you and judge you and

execute you. And I'll give that over to God. God,

you do what you need to do with him. He

you know what he did. He did die, and he

did have to go stand before his maker, and he

did have to give an account, right, and that released

me on that day when I realized I'm not saying

it's okay, I'm saying it's God's business, not mine anymore.

I'm giving them. And dude, I got set free from

the bitterness and the resentment that i'd had in all

that time prior when I finally realized, Okay, I'm not God.

I'm going to give him over to God. And God's

going to do what God's going to do for justice,

not me, right, And that's what says free. And so

when Jesus says, Father, forgive them, they don't know what

they're doing, Jesus is actually leading on behalf of those

who deserve judgment. And that's a whole other level.

Man.

Right, personal forgiveness is I don't have to judge you.

But this is he's advocating for them now, and that's

next level.

Yeah, that's definitely next level. And really there's so much

in that statement because he's saying they don't understand, almost

implying like if they understood, it would be a whole

different thing.

Yeah.

Right, So Father forgive them because they're acting at ignorance.

It was the alcohol in him that was doing it.

He wasn't that way when he was sober. He was

just that way when he was drunk. Here's just the

problem was he's drunk all the time, right, And Jesus

is understanding, we're drunk on our sin. We are are

consumed by the evil that is in us, to the

point we don't even really know the depths of our

hearts really, right, We're not very self aware. And Jesus

is just like, they have no idea what they're doing,

so forgive them. He looked at us, He looked at

his his the soldiers, his killers. He looked at them

with a compassion that I hope we can find in

our own hearts. That they're like children. They're just stumbling along,

stumbling around, consumed by evil. They have no idea how

this is ruining them and everything around them. And if

we can start to have that kind of compassion towards

the evils we see in society, maybe we can come

with far more power. Because it was right after that

prayer that this criminal goes Jesus, I want what you have, yeah, right,

and the world will want what we have when we

step up and we're able to say, God, you fix it.

Yeah. What a great podcast. I rate this top notch.

All right, that's a good one. Yeah, it's a good conversation,

good conversation. All right. Well, hey, hopefully we will see

you tomorrow on the Bibble guys,