Paradise in the Kingdom
Download MP3Alright. If you would, go ahead and turn your bibles to Luke 23. Luke 23. We're gonna be spending, most of our time, in Luke 2332 through 43. Luke 23 verses 30 32 through 43.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. Let us listen very carefully for this is the word of God. 2 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, 1 on his right and one on his left.
Jeffrey Heine: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.
Jeffrey Heine:There was also an inscription over him, this is the king of the Jews. 1 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.
Jeffrey Heine:And he said to Jesus, 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. Pray with me. Almighty God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it's true.
Jeffrey Heine:We thank you that we can come into this place and and strive to hear from you. Father, so many times in settings like this, we we pray that we would forget, all of our baggage. We we we wanna forget all of our hindrances or our sins or our our messed up past. But father, I pray that tonight you would bring that to the forefront of our minds and that they would not serve as a distraction, but that they would be used by you to teach us what you were doing on the cross. So, spirit, please come and teach us in this time.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray these things in and for the name of Christ. Amen. About 8 years ago, I read this article, by a philosopher named, Stephen Boma Priidegger, and it was called Yearning for Home. And it really had a profound impact on me. It was about this idea that everyone, everyone, whether or not they recognize it and see it or not, that we are in a constant state of homelessness.
Jeffrey Heine:What he means by that is that we are always in this nomadic exile. We're we're all walking together homeless. He defines it like this. We are all pilgrims and wayfarers. Today we might describe this sojourn as one of perpetual homelessness where we are suspicious of all claims of truth, we are restless, and we are anxious about the future.
Jeffrey Heine:See that's this this fear, this distrust. And and when when I read this, when I was in college, it it it struck me, Because it hit a lot of what I was feeling at that time. A lot of fear that I was feeling. A lot of uncertainty and this restlessness. A a kind of a metaphor for that or may maybe a small glimpse, a micro glimpse of that kind of thing is, do you know, for those of you that that moved off kind of early on after graduating high school, maybe the second or third year of being away, your your maybe your sophomore year of college, you went home for Thanksgiving.
Jeffrey Heine:And when you went home, it was a little different. Those friends that you graduated high school with, that you went to different schools and everything, and you're you're trying to reconnect with them, and it's just it's just not there. Or your family and and you've you've been gone for a while now. You've been you've been on your own. And and it's difficult.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not that same dynamic that used to be there. I went home, my sophomore year to see that the video store slash tanning bed that I had worked at, for high school, that that it was a subway. A subway. It wasn't Lone Oak Video and tanning anymore. But my keys still worked.
Jeffrey Heine:So there was still this, like, little connection of home and just fresh bread whenever I wanted it. But it was, it was an interesting dynamic. Home wasn't home anymore. And see, what what Steven is getting at is that that's on a much bigger scale, this homesickness that we feel. And we might not even recognize it.
Jeffrey Heine:And I believe that we can trace that feeling, that homesickness, all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. In verse 22, it says, then the lord god said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat it and live forever. Verse 23. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
Jeffrey Heine:He drove out the man. And at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. That is the beginning of this homelessness, this homesickness, this exile. And when man was exiled from the garden, it wasn't simply just an enjoyable dwelling that he was cast out of. It was fellowship.
Jeffrey Heine:It was communion with God himself. And from that moment forward, we have been nomads walking the earth, Longing for home. And so here we are in in our 51st sermon on Luke. We've been in this for a while now. And here we are in Luke 23.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus has been betrayed by Judas. He has gone through his trials and he has been sentenced to death. And at his execution, he's already been beaten. And the other gospels, other than than Luke goes into detail about being beaten and the abuse. Luke doesn't go into that kind of severity.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't really, get graphic. It's not kind of like the Mel Gibson picture of the passion. It's a little bit more, matter of fact, here, here are the things that happened in the execution. And what I'd like for us to do is to to focus in on these two things that are very unique to Luke. These interactions between Jesus, executed Jesus, the the Jesus on the cross and those that are reviling him, those that are mocking him.
Jeffrey Heine:And so the main question I'd like for us to get at as we look at these two scenes, is asking ourselves, do we know what's happening? Do we know what they're doing? And ultimately, do we know what god is doing here? So look with me. Verse 32.
Jeffrey Heine:2 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 Latin is calvaria, and that's where we get Calvary, the place of the skull. Once they they arrived there, they put the 2 criminals, 1 on either side. The other gospels tell us that they were robbers. They were thieves.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus said, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now, if you have an ESV or an NIV or probably some other translations, you you might see a little footnote there with father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Verse 34. And that little footnote probably says some manuscripts omit this sentence. Now it's because it's it's scandalous.
Jeffrey Heine:These comments from Jesus are very scandalous and and they they didn't know what to do with them. So scribes, the ones that were were transcribing the scriptures and and, helping to transmit them, they started taking it out. And there are a lot of different reasons to consider as to why they were taking it out. One would be that they didn't like Jesus forgiving people, not when he's being crucified. They didn't like Jesus sounding weak and offering forgiveness from the cross where he's been beaten and strung up to die.
Jeffrey Heine:Another reason might be that they didn't want, particularly the Jews or the Romans, to get off the hook here, to be forgiven. And then another reason might be that 40 years later, Jerusalem was sacked. It was ransacked. The Romans turned it upside down. The temple was destroyed 70 a d.
Jeffrey Heine:And so they pointed to that and they said, well, that doesn't really look like forgiveness. And so they would take it out. But, really, what's at play here is that he did say these words. And what he's doing takes us back to last summer When we were looking at the sermon on the plane in Luke 6, last July, where Jesus was telling his disciples and those that would follow after him to pray for their enemies, To love those that are hating them. And that is even more of a scandal than forgiveness to the Jews, That Jesus would pray for his enemies.
Jeffrey Heine:If there's ever been a doubt as to what turn the other cheek means, that's it. That's the picture. That on the cross, Jesus prays for his enemies, those that hate him. That is a severe challenge to us today. That we would follow our savior.
Jeffrey Heine:And we see this play out. We see this later with Stephen when Stephen is stoned in acts 7. And they're throwing the stones at him. And he says, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Even from the cross, Jesus displays his love and compassion.
Jeffrey Heine:Now there are a couple of things that we can learn from this prayer. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And the first is that staggering humility of Jesus. I mean, it it should stop us dead in our tracks. That he would have this kind of compassion.
Jeffrey Heine:Praying for those who persecuted him. And then secondly, that those who crucified Jesus did not know what they were doing. Now, they were Romans, and they knew how to execute people. They knew how to do that. They did it all the time.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, these these guys that are thieves are executed. I mean, I don't know what they stole, but they're dying right next to Jesus. Same kind of death. They knew how to do that. And this was a political criminal, Jesus, misleading the nation, forbidding tribute to Caesar, claiming kingship.
Jeffrey Heine:They knew how to execute people like that. That kind of stuff happened all the time. I mean, when you are an empire like Rome, I mean, you've got to crack a few eggs, you know. And and so they knew how to do this. But Jesus is saying something different.
Jeffrey Heine:That they did not know what they were doing. They did not know that they were killing the son of god. They did not know that they were killing the word made flesh. They did not know that they were murdering the one through whom we're all things and through whom we exist. And they did not know that they were killing the one through whom the world itself was created.
Jeffrey Heine:Not only that, they didn't know what the father was doing as they crucified Jesus. Hear these words from Isaiah 53. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.
Jeffrey Heine:He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his stripes, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.
Jeffrey Heine:And hear this. And the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. They didn't know that that was happening. They didn't know what Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 521. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin.
Jeffrey Heine:So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. They didn't know that that was happening. That the father was putting our sin and iniquity on Jesus, and that Jesus was giving us his righteousness. They didn't know that. They were executing a political criminal.
Jeffrey Heine:They knew not what they did. They didn't understand that this beautiful imputation was happening. Meaning that our sin goes on to Christ himself as he hung on the tree cursed. And that from him, his perfect obedience and righteousness was being applied to us here now that we would walk in that righteousness. And there was one more thing that they didn't know.
Jeffrey Heine:And we see that when we turn our attention to these 2 thieves. Verse 35. 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, the chosen one. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, 'If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.' Verse 39.
Jeffrey Heine:One of the criminals was hanged railed at him saying, 'Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. All of these, all 3 of these. The the rulers to the soldiers to the criminal, all mocking him. All reviling him.
Jeffrey Heine:All with these sarcastic comments. If you're the king, save yourself. And and to see this from not only the rulers, those with authority and power, but all the way to the criminal. To the criminal, the lowest of the low, crucified for stealing. Even he was mocking Jesus, Son of God, creator of the world.
Jeffrey Heine:So everything in between, the the whole world railing against But something happens as one criminal is is railing against Jesus, the other criminal steps up and he rebukes him. Verse 40. 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.
Jeffrey Heine:We've we've heard that phrase, that declaration of of innocence a couple of times during the trial. This man is innocent. This man is innocent. I find nothing wrong with him. No guilt in him.
Jeffrey Heine:This innocence this innocence, yet this crucifixion. And the thief sees this. He sees this. Now, I I kind of as I've been studying over this, it's hard for me to think of these men beaten, nails driven through their hands and their feet, getting all this dialogue out. I cut my foot really badly on Friday, and and I had to do, a terrible task, which was and and I'm sorry.
Jeffrey Heine:I had to I had to cut some skin away to get in there to to clean where the wound was. And, like, I was having to hold one hand was holding my foot still still because it was shaking so badly. Okay? That was my toe. Alright?
Jeffrey Heine:The these men are crucified, and and there's this this interchange, this dialogue that's happening with with them. And I just I invite you to step into this scene. Stand there and and see this. I mean, I'm reading this rather quickly. It might have been between long gasps for air to get these words out.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, when you are in a situation like that, you you would choose your your words carefully, And this man steps up a criminal, lowest of the low, to rebuke another criminal and essentially everyone else that's mocking Jesus to say, no. No. We deserve this. He does not. And he knew he knew that this crucifixion had something to do with god and fearing god.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, I doubt that this was a systematic theologian. I I don't think that he knew all the ins and outs. And no, he didn't stand there and give this long dialogue about or monologue of who Jesus is, and and and walk the the aisle, and make his way down, and shake a hand, and then, you know, 6 weeks later, like, be baptized. Because he sees something that no one else sees. In a moment where Jesus is not doing any miracles, he's not walking on water, he's not healing anyone, he's he's not bringing sight to someone, he's not doing any of this.
Jeffrey Heine:He's not turning water into wine. He's not breaking bread and multiplying fish. He's not doing any of these things. He looks as helpless as he ever looked. The last time he looked this helpless, he was in a manger.
Jeffrey Heine:He was in a feeding trough. The last time he looked this helpless. Yet he sees something no one else sees. And that is that Jesus is not simply being executed. He sees that the way of the cross is the way to the kingdom.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, Jesus could have done a number of miracles. A number of miracles from the cross. Angels in wait, sword in hand, ready to rescue him. He could have done a number of things to turn that mocking into praise. That mocking into repentance.
Jeffrey Heine:But he didn't. He did a different kind of miracle. One that might be even more amazing than the walking on water or the turning the water into wine. He caused a thief set for execution to see him as king. You see, he saw that Jesus wasn't just being martyred or executed.
Jeffrey Heine:He saw that plans were not thwarted, but fulfilled. He saw that the plan that the father had had had had since the beginning was being played out in front of him. This was not martyrdom. This was the beginning of the coronation. This was a king coming to power, which is why he calls out Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Personal name here. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. The thief saw authority in what looked what looked like the most powerless moment of Jesus' life. And he appeals to that power and that authority. Now there's so much, involved in remembering.
Jeffrey Heine:So many theological things in remembering and forgetting. I've talked about some of those before in some other sermons. And and it's just it's so rich. If you think about think back to when Israel forgot the commandments, when they were forgetting the commandments, that meant that they weren't doing them. And when Hannah appealed to God to remember her in her barrenness, that's what that's when God, in his divine remembrance, brought about her ability to conceive a child.
Jeffrey Heine:Remembering and forgetting means something is happening. Especially when it's divine remembrance. That's when god is actively doing something. And so the thief makes this appeal not to his love, though there is love. Not to his compassion, though there is compassion.
Jeffrey Heine:But the appeal is to his authority. Remember based upon his kingship. And so, at this point, when he is on his death bed Jesus is on his death bed moments from his final breath. The criminal makes that appeal. When you come into your kingdom, remember me.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the work of the spirit. This is the spirit revealing to the thief truth. And then Jesus says something that is amazing. And and really, something worthy of its own sermon series, let alone its own sermon. But he says to him, truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, truly. And this should strike us all in a world where it's so difficult to know who to trust, or what to trust, or what to believe in, or what what is real. Jesus says, truly. That his words can be trusted. Truly, today.
Jeffrey Heine:Today you will be with me in paradise. What is this paradise? The word paradise comes from the Greek word paradisos. It's a term that's actually borrowed from the Persians. And, for them it meant the garden of a king.
Jeffrey Heine:Like within within his living quarters, the garden where they would bring all the the lush trees and and bushes and shrubs and vegetables and all the they bring all these things together and make this this beautiful garden. Now when they translated the, old testament scriptures into Greek in about 300 to 200 BC, they used this word paradisos in Genesis chapter 2 verse 8. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. Paradise.
Jeffrey Heine:The garden. When Jesus is on the cross and the thief is pleading with him concerning the kingdom. When throughout Luke's gospel, which which you know, you you've heard for over a year now as we've walked through these appeals to the kingdom. The kingdom. The kingdom.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus reaches all the way back for an image from Genesis. And says, today you will be with me in the garden. Doctor Alan Ross, in his book cre creation not creation blessing, Recalling the Hope of Glory. He writes this. In the center of God's creation, there was a garden.
Jeffrey Heine:And although no sinful person since Adam and Eve has seen it, it remains in human memory as the epitome of beauty, tranquility, and fertility. The beauty of the garden was not only the concentrated place of God's gifts in creation, it was the primary place of communion between god and man. It was where the lord god walked in the midst of his creation, where the man and the woman had immediate access to god in a perfect environment. You see, the promise from Jesus to the criminal was that through the cross, he would go to the garden of the king. That is, that Jesus restores and redeems and recreates.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's why that's why I prayed at the start of this, as we began to look at these things, that we would not hold our failures off. Have you ever been in, like, one of those church settings where maybe it's, you know, they they do the, draw a circle around yourself and, like, act like there's this, like, cone of distance. And, you know, forget about these things and forget about these things and separate yourself out. That is not the call of Christ. He says, come to me all who are weary, heavy laden.
Jeffrey Heine:Come with your failures. Come to the cross. Come like a thief executed for your sins, and look to me. Look to me. This repentance from the thief, there is no glory to it.
Jeffrey Heine:No fanfare to it. No one shouting numbers at the end of the night of how many people made decisions, and there's a party in heaven. There none none of those things. It was a it was a criminal, a thief, before almighty God saying, this man is innocent, Hope. Hope.
Jeffrey Heine:He saw hope in what looked like the most hopeless place on earth. And through that cross, the garden, this restoration, this thing that we have been longing for and yearning for, Think of these things in your life. Think about the longing that you feel. Think about your restlessness. For any any of you that are in ministry or or are preparing for ministry, the question that you often get will be, I don't know what to do with my life.
Jeffrey Heine:Questions of direction. What do I do? Where do I go? Do I marry this person? Do I break up with this person?
Jeffrey Heine:What what what do I do next? We're nomads. We're in exile, longing for the garden. Longing to be complete and to have this community with God. And we don't even see it most of the time.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the longing of our hearts. This is the restlessness that Saint Augustine talked about. The heart is restless until it rests in thee. And I I know many of you. This is the joy of having a church that's our size.
Jeffrey Heine:I I know many of you, and I know what's going on in your lives right now, and you know what's going on in mine. Things are not okay, and we are in desperate desperate need of this hope. And this is the promise. The promise of the garden, That he will restore us, he will redeem us, and he will recreate us. As Paul talks about, that those who are in Christ are a new creation.
Jeffrey Heine:The old things have passed away. Behold, the new the new has come. This is what we long for. This is why we come together in in a community like this. It's to remember the garden.
Jeffrey Heine:We come in here to remember communion with god. Because we not only have this sense of longing for the garden, we have this hope of the garden. We have this promise of the garden. And so we come together and say, I know this happened this past week. I know these things have been going on.
Jeffrey Heine:And we come together and we sing side by side. I know some of you aren't aren't Christians. And I know that some of you are wrestling through these things. And it's tough and it's hard, but this is why we come together. To yearn and long for the kingdom, the garden, and to point to the hope and the promise that's been given to us in Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:And that we have a foretaste of that. The taste of the kingdom, the taste of the garden, and the spirit. This one spirit, and we all abide in and abides in us. And so I I challenge you as you walk away from yet another sermon about the crucifixion, examine yourselves for this longing, this homelessness, this homesickness. Examine yourselves for that.
Jeffrey Heine:And examine yourselves for that hope, that promise, that we will be with the king in his paradise, in his garden. Pray with me. Almighty God, we we thank you again just for your Word, and that we can come to it, and that you will tell us truly. That you will explain the desires of our hearts. You will explain the pains in our lives.
Jeffrey Heine:You will explain the yearning and the longing. You will explain it to us. And that through Christ you have called out to us those who are weary. Those who are crushed beneath the burdens of life. You tell us to come to you.
Jeffrey Heine:To come to the cross. That we could draw near. And that through the cross, we will know what you are doing. The crowd, the rulers, the soldiers, they knew not what they were doing. Teach us what you were doing and what you have accomplished.
Jeffrey Heine:Father, son, and spirit. Amen.
