PARADISE LUKE 23: April 5&6, 2014 Pastor Bob Petterson. Covenant Church of Naples PCA

Transcription

1 COVENANT PULPIT Living expressions OOF DEATHBED CCONFESSIONS PARADISE LUKE 23:38-43 April 5&6, 2014 Pastor Bob Petterson Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples FL (239)

2 In his book, The Night, Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel writes hauntingly of what happened to his Jewish family in the Nazi death camps. Listen to his words: As the sea of people drifts by I see for the last time a mother and her little daughter, ghostly silent and introverted. I see them walk way, hand in hand, closely entwined. I will continue seeing them in my mind s eye as long as I live, how they disappear. That woman was his mother, and her daughter was his little sister. Wiesel says that he frantically prayed to God, but his mother and sister perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and his father was beaten to death at Buchenwald. He remembers the words of a Kapo: Here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends, no God. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone. Before Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel believed in God. Afterwards, it was easier be an atheist than to think that, the Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful was silent and passive in the face of monstrous evil. He s not the first one to complain about God s silence. Job s world collapsed and he ended up on an ash heap, his body covered with oozing sores. He cried out to God, only to be greeted by silence. He screamed, If only I could find [God]; if only I could find his house, I would go there and state my complaint [Job 23:3&4] King David also railed, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I find no rest. Psalm 42:1&2 After his wife died of cancer, C.S. Lewis grief was so bad that he almost lost his mind [and his faith]. He wrote in A Grief Observed, that the worst thing was God s silence: You pound on his door, only to hear the sound of the key shutting the lock, and footsteps on the inside walking away. You are left with awful silence. You might as well give up and go back home.

3 We have all experienced what St. John of the Cross called, The dark night of the soul. Even the greatest of saints have asked, Where is God when it hurts? No one asked it with more anguish than Jesus on the cross: Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27:46 Jesus understands every one of us who have screamed out loud [or silently], Why don t you answer me God? Don t you care? On that cross outside Jerusalem, God answers. He s not silent. God the Son screams right alongside us. He came down from heaven to experience our pain, identify with our sorrows, and feel our loneliness and rejection. At the cross he redeemed our suffering, and us too. If every person in this world would embrace that cross, receive the salvation offered there, and experience the transformation that comes when the Resurrected Christ invades our lives, there would be no holocausts, genocides, racism, divorce, abuse, abandonment, or any of the other horrors that cause Elie Wiesel [and so many others] to reject the existence of God. Eli Wiesel thought that his family was being deprived of life, and that God didn t care. The truth is: this world is a dead place. God said to Adam, In the day you eat of this fruit, you will surely die. [Genesis 2:17] St. Paul said, Through one man s sin, death reigns [everywhere] [Romans 5:17] We live on a dying planet. Spiritually, we are all dead men walking. Days before his crucifixion, Jesus stood at a gravesite. His reaction is captured in the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. [John 11:35]. The Greek word for wept speaks of angry, frustrated weeping. This wasn t the way it was supposed to be. God created a paradise where we could experience abundant life. Humankind turned it into a desert of death. But, on the cross, Jesus promises an escape: today, you will be with me in paradise. [Luke 23:43]. What s he saying? We are now in the land of the dying, waiting for the land of the living.

4 Let s talk about paradise. The Garden of Eden was the original paradise: no shame, no death, no thorns, no tears, no death. Adam and Eve lost it. St. Paul writes, All of creation now groans in frustration [Romans 8:22] The Puritan poet, John Milton said that we now live somewhere between the first paradise Adam lost, and the second paradise yet to be brought by Jesus Christ. In between there s no paradise. People call Naples Paradise. It is gorgeous, but all the artificial beauty of gated communities forged out of mangrove swamps can t keep out the snake, or thorns and thistles, or cancer, or heartbreak. There is no paradise today. Humans try to create utopia, fix global warming, build new world orders, eradicate disease, stop war, and guarantee economic security, but St. Paul is right: creation still groans in frustration. The more we try to create paradise, the more we muck things up. But a new paradise is on the way. St. Paul promises in Romans 8:21, the creation will be liberated from its bondage Jesus promises it to a thief on a cross next to his, and to all the rest of us who hang on the crosses of our own making. John Newton was a notorious slave trader who walked away from human trafficking to follow Christ. On his deathbed, this man who wrote Amazing Grace lamented that the world was still full of wretched people, who did wretched things to each other like he had done to African slaves. He began to think about that one thief next to Jesus. He said to those at his bedside, I am as wretched as that thief, and as undeserving of going to heaven. These were the last words the converted slave trader uttered: I am still in the land of the dying, but I will soon be in the land of the living. Let s look at the dying Jesus, and those two dying thieves on the crosses next to his. 1. THE DEAD STILL THINK THEY ARE IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING, SO THEY FEAR DEATH. Two thieves hang on the crosses next to Jesus. Who are these wretched men? Remember, Jesus is hanging on the

5 cross of Barabbas. A few days before a group of Jewish revolutionaries had tried to seize the Roman fortress of Antonia that stood next to the temple complex in Jerusalem. Barabbas was the ringleader. Revolutionary sounds so noble. In fact, he was a First Century version of today s Middle Eastern terrorists. Think Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, car bomber, 9-11, or Osama bin Laden and you ve tagged Barabbas. He and his thugs are thieves and cutthroats creating mayhem and murder in the name God and Country. Now the survivors of Barabbas shortlived assault on the Fortress of Antonia are facing Roman justice. But Barabbas escaped his fate when the lynch mob chose him over Jesus. However, his two associates weren t so lucky. The Holy Spirit, who inspired Luke to write this gospel, doesn t see them as Robin Hood revolutionaries who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. They are simply called criminals. The King James Version calls them thieves. The original Greek could be translated anarchists. Look at the first terrorist: One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: Aren t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us. Luke 23:39 As a slap at the Jews, Pontius Pilate had ordered a sign put over the cross of Jesus: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. The Roman Governor was sick and tired of this dust bowl country full of political intrigue with its Old Testament Scriptures predicting a Messiah who would rise up and save Israel. The Hebrew word Messiah [or the Greek word Christ] means the Anointed One or King or Savior. It seemed that every week some backwoods revolutionary would rise up, proclaiming himself to be the Messiah then gather a following, and terrorize the Roman forces of occupation to pull out of the Middle East [not much has changed in 2,000 years] Jesus was the latest person to be proclaimed Messiah. And Pilate was sending a Roman message to Israelis: Look at this mangled man on the cross. This is what comes of your Messiahs.

6 The religious leaders who goaded Pilate into crucifying Jesus, look at the sign and jeer Jesus: He saved others; let him save himself if he is God s Messiah, the Chosen One. [Luke 23:35] The Roman soldiers joined into the mocking: If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. [Luke 23:36]. Now one of the terrorists joins in the chorus. He doesn t have much use for Jesus sort of kingdom. It s all about heaven; by-and-by, a pie-in-the-sky kingdom not of this world. It calls people to die to self, to take up a cross, to be poor in spirit, to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile. But he s all about this earth. It s the hereand-now that matters. Here, the one with gold and guts rules. You only go round once, so grab all the gusto you can. He had given himself to restoring paradise on this earth; the dream of Israeli zealots to build a Jewish utopia the Free State of Israel. The religious leaders believed that they could build a Utopian Paradise on the foundation of Torah Law. The Roman soldiers were Caesar s agents, keeping the Pax Romana the Peace of Rome. Jesus is an enemy of all those who believe that humankind can restore the paradise that Adam lost. But the first terrorist desperately wants to live. So, behind his insults is a dead man s last hopes: Just in case we are all wrong [and you just might be the Messiah], get us down off this cross. We so desperately want to hold on to this life because we think that it is really life. We think we can fix what is broken. But this world is more than broken. It is a dying planet full of dead people trying to breathe new life into the old corpse. No wonder, John Newton said on his deathbed [or was it really his deathbed?]: I am in the land of the dying, but I will soon be in the land of the living. 2. THE ALIVE KNOW THAT THEY ARE IN THE LAND OF THE DYING, BUT THEY LONG FOR THE LAND OF THE LIVING. Now the other terrorist cries out, Don t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished

7 justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. [Luke 23:40] This is amazing. No, it is more: it is miraculous! Earlier, according to Matthew 27:44, both the terrorists joined in the mocking of Jesus. The second was just as bad as the first. He too had spent his life trying to build an Israeli utopia. He too had stolen, killed, and terrorized people in the name of patriotism and revolution. And he too mocked Jesus. But something happened to this spiritually dead man. The Holy Spirit got ahold of him at the eleventh hour [59 th minute, and 59 th second]. His eyes were opened to see. His heart of stone was replaced by a heart of flesh. He was given the faith to believe, and he was radically changed. It was the greatest miracle of all: spiritual rebirth; being born again. Suddenly he sees the truth. He is a dead man who has dealt in death all his life. He deserves this death sentence. But Jesus has done nothing wrong. He deserves life. But he is dying with them. One could say to Elie Wiesel, He has joined your mother and sister in the gas chamber. He has been beaten to death along with your father at Buchenwald. He too cried out to God, and was greeted with silence. He has joined us all, as surely as he joined those terrorists. He has joined us so he can give us life. Grabbing hold of that hope, the second terrorist makes a bold request: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. [Luke 23:42] He realizes that there is a kingdom beyond this place of death. Life is on the other side, not here. Paradise is wherever Jesus is, not here. Suddenly, we understand that Eden was paradise because God walked there. Paradise is wherever God is. If you are with God, even if you are walking through a desert, or hanging on a cross, you are in the presence of paradise. Just before he died of a terminal disease, W.B. Hinson, one of the greatest preachers in the Pacific Northwest, went for a walk in the beauty of the Oregon countryside, looking at the mountains, rivers and stars that had given him so many years of joy. Then he wrote down a prayer:

8 I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great down pulling of the universe!" 3. THERE CAN BE NO LAND OF THE LIVING WITHOUT THE SOURCE OF LIFE. Jesus replies in verse 43, Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Where is paradise? Wherever God is, paradise is. In 1 Corinthians 12:2 St. Paul calls paradise the third heaven. In Jewish cosmology the third heaven is God s throne room. Again, paradise is where God is. Just as hell is everything God is not [because God won t be there], then paradise is everything that God is [because he is there]: life, light, goodness, holiness, no tears, no pain, no rejection, no death, no thirst, no hunger, no loneliness, no longing for something more, something better, something missing. If God is there, then everything you ever need, and infinitely more, will be there. Jesus is God one with his Father in heaven. Today, you will be with me To be with Jesus in this world of death is to have life in you, but to be with him after death is to be immersed in total, abundant, absolute, forever life! Their bodies will both die and be put in graves within the next hours. But their spirits will go immediately into the presence of God: paradise. No wonder the Bible says, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints. [Psalm 116:15]. It is precious because we are precious to him, and it is even more precious to him when we are with him. The moment we breathe our last, we are immediately in his presence. Paradise is to go from the land of death to the land of the living. What about it: are you ready to go? Copyright April 5&6, 2014 by Covenant Church of Naples, FL / PCA