THE PENITENT THIEF.
I am going to take for my text, this morning, “A Man”—the last one that Jesus saved before He returned to Heaven.
The fact that Jesus saved such a man at all ought to give every one of us much hope and comfort. This man was a thief—a highwayman and murderer, perhaps—and yet Christ takes him with Him when He ascends to glory; and if Jesus is not ashamed of such a man, surely no class of sinners need to feel that they are left out.
It is a blessed fact that all kinds of men and women are represented among the converts in the Gospels, and almost all of them were converted suddenly.
Very many people object to sudden conversions, but you may read in the Acts of the Apostles of eight thousand people converted in two days. That seems to me rather quick work. If all the Christians before me this morning would only consecrate themselves to the work of Christ, they might be the means of converting that number before the week is out.
Let us look at Christ hanging on the cross, between two thieves—the Scribes and Pharisees wagging their heads and jeering at Him, His disciples gone away, and only His mother and one or two other women in sight to cheer Him with their presence, among all this concourse of enemies—relentless and mocking enemies.
Hear those spiteful Pharisees calling out to Jesus: “If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe on Thee.” And the account says that the two thieves cast the same in His teeth.
So, then, the first thing that we know of our man is that he is a reviler of Christ. You might reasonably think that he ought to be doing something else at such a time as this; but, hanging there in the midst of his tortures, and certain to be dead in a few hours, instead of confessing his sins and preparing to meet the God whose laws he had broken all his life—instead of that, he is abusing God’s only Son. Surely, this man can not sink any lower until he sinks into hell!
The next thing we hear of him, he appears to be under conviction. Nobody is ever converted until he is convicted.
In the twenty-third chapter of Luke we read:
“And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying: ‘If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us.’ But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying: ‘Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss.’”
What, do you suppose, it was that made this great change in this man’s feelings in these few hours?
Christ had not preached him a sermon—had given him no exhortation. The darkness had not yet come on; the Earth had not opened its mouth; the business of death was going on as usual; the crowd was still there, mocking and hissing and wagging their heads; and yet this man, who in the morning was railing at Christ, is now confessing his sins.
“We indeed justly.”
No miracle had been wrought before his eyes. The Son of God had not come down from the cross. No angel from Heaven had come to place a glittering crown upon His head, in place of the bloody crown of thorns.
What was it, then?
I will tell you what I think it was. I think it was the Savior’s prayer:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I seem to hear this thief talking with himself in this fashion:
“What a strange kind of man this must be! He says He is King of the Jews; and the superscription on His cross says the same thing. But what sort of a throne is this? He says He is the Son of God. Why does not God send down His angels, and destroy all this great gathering of people that are torturing His Son? If He has all power now, as He used to have when He worked those miracles they talk about, why does He not bring out His vengeance, and sweep all these wretches into destruction? I would do it in a minute, if I had the power. Oh, if I could, I would open the Earth, and swallow up these tormentors!
“But this man prays to God to ‘forgive them.’
“Strange! Strange! He must be different from the rest of us. I am sorry that I said one word against Him when they first hung us up here. What a difference there is between Him and me!
“Here we are, hanging on two crosses—side by side; but all the rest of our lives we have been far enough apart. I have been robbing and murdering, but He has been visiting the hungry, healing the sick, and raising the dead. Now these people are railing at us both. What a strange world is this!
“I will not rail at Him any more. Indeed, I begin to believe He must be the Son of God; for, surely, no son of man could forgive his enemies this way.”
That is what did it, my friends.
This poor man had been scourged and beaten and nailed to the cross, and hung up there for the world to gaze upon; and he was not sorry for his sins one single bit—did not feel the least conviction on account of all that misery. But when he heard the Savior praying for His murderers that broke his heart.
I remember to have heard a story, somewhere, of a bad boy that had run away from home. He had given his father no end of trouble. He had refused all the invitations that his father had sent him to come home and be forgiven, and help to comfort his old heart. He had even gone so far as to scoff at his father and mother.
But one day a letter came, telling him his father was dead, and they wanted him to come home and attend the funeral.
At first he determined he would not go, but then he thought it would be a shame not to pay some little show of respect to the memory of so good a man after he was dead; and so, just as a matter of form, he took a train and went to the old home.
He sat through all the funeral services, saw his kind old father buried, and came back with the rest of the friends to the house, with his heart as cold and stony as ever. But when the old man’s will was brought out to be read, the ungrateful son found that his father had remembered him along with all the other members of the family in the will, and had left him an inheritance with the others, who had not gone astray.
This broke his heart.
It was too much for him, that his old father, during all those years in which he had been so wicked and so rebellious, had never ceased to love him.
That is just the way our Father in Heaven does with us. That is just the way Jesus does with people who refuse to give their hearts to Him. He loves them in spite of their sins, and it is the love which, more than any thing else, brings hard-hearted sinners to fall upon their knees.
Now, this thief on the cross confessed his sins. A man may be very sorry for his sins; but, if he does not confess them, he has no promise of being forgiven. The thief says: “We are suffering justly.” I never knew any man to be converted until he confessed.
Cain felt bad enough over his sins, but he did not confess.
Saul was greatly tormented in his mind, but he went to the Witch of Endor rather than to the Lord.
Judas felt so bad over the betrayal of his Master that he went out and hanged himself; but he did not confess—that is, he did not confess to God. He came back and confessed to the priests, saying: “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” It was of no use to confess to them; they could not forgive him. What he should have done was to confess to God; but instead of that, he rushed out and hanged himself.
How different is the case with the penitent thief! He confesses his sins to Christ, and Christ has mercy on him at once.
Just here is one of the great difficulties with many people. They do not like to come up face to face with their sins. They do not like to own that they are sinners. They excuse themselves in every way. They think they are not very bad sinners; that there are a great many worse than they are; and so they try to cover up the great fact that this penitent thief confesses openly. My friends, you never will be saved, so long as you try to cover up your sins.
We have heard a great deal about the faith of Abraham and the faith of Moses; but this man seems to me to have had more faith than any of them. He stands at the head of his class.
God was twenty-five years toning up the faith of Abraham; Moses was forty years getting ready for his work; but this thief, right here in the midst of men who rejected Him—nailed to the cross and racked with pain in every nerve, overwhelmed with horror, and his soul in a perfect tempest—still manages to lay hold upon Christ, and trust in Him for a swift salvation. His heart goes out to the Savior. How glad he would be to fall on his knees at the foot of that cross, and pour out his prayer to Him who was hanging on it! But this he can not do. His hands and feet are nailed fast to the wood; but they can not nail his eyes, nor his heart. He can, at least, turn his head, and look upon the Son of God; and his breaking heart can go out in love to the One who is dying beside him—dying for him, and dying for you and me.
And what did Jesus say in answer to his prayer?
That prayer was a confession of Christ. He calls Jesus “Lord,” and begs to be remembered in His kingdom. That must be a kingdom in Heaven—for, surely, there was no chance of a kingdom on Earth, as matters looked at that time.
Christ fulfilled His promise to the thief:
“Whoso confesseth Me before men, him will I confess before my Father and the holy angels.”
He looks kindly upon him, and says:
“Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.”
And now the darkness falls upon the Earth; the Sun hides itself; but, worse than all, the Father hides His face from the Son. What else is the meaning of that bitter cry?
“My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Ah! It had been written:
“Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”
Jesus is made a curse for us. God can not look upon sin; and now His own Son is bearing, in His own body, the sins of the world; and so He can not look upon Him.
I think that was what was heaviest upon the Savior’s heart, away there in the Garden, when He prayed: “If it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me.”
He could bear the unfaithfulness of His friends, the spite of His enemies, the pain of His crucifixion and the shadow of death. He could bear all these. But when it came to the hiding of His Father’s face, that seemed almost too much for even the Son of God to bear. But even this He endured for our sins; and now the face of God is turned back to us, whose sins had turned it away, and looking upon Jesus, the sinless One, He sees our souls in Him.
In the midst of all His agony, how sweet it must have been to Christ to hear that poor thief confessing Him! He likes to have men confessing Him.
Do you remember His asking Peter: “Who do men say that I am?”
Peter answered: “Some people say You are Moses; some people say You are Elias, and some people say You are one of the old prophets.”
He asked again: “But, Peter, who do you say that I am?”
And when Peter said “Thou art the Son of God,” Jesus blessed him for that confession.
And now this thief confesses Him—confesses Him in the darkness. Perhaps it is so dark he can not see Him any longer; but he feels that He is there beside him.
This poor thief did as much for Christ in that one act as if he had lived and worked for Him fifty years. That is what Christ wants of us—to confess Him; in the dark as well as in the light, and when it is hard as well as when it is easy. For He was not ashamed of us, and carried our sins even unto death.
Just look for a minute at the prayer of this penitent thief.
He calls Jesus “Lord.” That sounds like a young convert. “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” Not a very long prayer, you see, but a prevailing prayer.
Some people think they must have a form of prayer—a prayer book, perhaps—if they are going to address the Throne of Grace properly. But what would that poor fellow do with a prayer book up there—hanging on the cross, his hands nailed fast to the wood? Suppose it were necessary that some minister or priest should pray for him, what is he going to do? There is nobody there to pray for him, and he is going to die within a few hours. He is out of reach of help from men, but God has laid help upon One who is mighty, and that One is close at hand.
Then look at the answer to his prayer. The supplicant received more than he asked. He only asked to be remembered when Christ came into His kingdom. But Christ said to him: “I will take you right up with Me into My kingdom today.”
The Savior wants us all to remember Him in His old kingdom—to remember Him in the breaking of bread and in the drinking of wine—and then He will remember us in the new kingdom.
Just think of this, my friends. The last the world ever saw of Christ He was on the cross. The last business of His life was the saving of a poor penitent thief. That was a part of His triumph; that was one of the glories attending His death.
No doubt Satan said to himself: “I will have the soul of that thief, pretty soon, down here in the caverns of the lost. He belongs to me; he has belonged to me all these years.”
Jacob, Tending Flocks of Laban.—From the Painting by Gustave Dore.
Moses, Breaking The Tables of The Law
From the Painting by Gustave Dore.
But Christ snapped the fetters of his soul, and set him at liberty; Satan lost his prey. “The Lion of the tribe of Judah” conquered the lion of hell.
You know that in the British colonies, before the day of Wilberforce, there used to be a great many slaves; but that good man began to agitate the question of setting them free; and all the slaves in the colonies, when they heard of it, were very anxious to hear how he was getting along. They knew the bill was before Parliament, and with them it was a question next to that of life itself.
But in those days there were no telegraphs and no steamships. The mails went by the slow sailing vessels. They would be from six to eight months in making the voyage to some of the more distant of the colonies. The slaves used to watch for the white sails of British ships, hoping to hear good reports, and also fearing they might hear bad ones.
There was a ship that had sailed immediately after the Emancipation Act had been passed and signed by the king; and when she came within hailing distance of the boats that had put off from the shore at the port of her destination, the captain could not wait to deliver the message officially, and have it duly promulgated by the government; but, seeing the anxious men standing up in their boats, eager for the news, he placed his trumpet to his mouth, and shouted with all his might:
“Free! Free!”
Just so the angels shouted when this poor bondman of Satan’s, almost in the jaws of the pit, was taken in hand by the Savior Himself; delivered from the bondage of darkness into the liberty of His dear Son! Free—free from sin—free from the curse of the law—free, too, in a short time, from the bonds of the flesh.
What a contrast! In the morning he is led out a condemned criminal; in the evening he is saved from his sins. In the morning he is cursing; in the evening he is singing hallelujahs with a choir of angels. In the morning he is condemned by men as not fit to live on Earth; in the evening he is reckoned good enough for Heaven.
Christ was not ashamed to walk arm-in-arm with him along the golden pavements of the Eternal City.
He had heard the Savior’s cry: “It is finished.” He had seen the spear thrust into His side. Jesus had died before his very eyes, and hastened before him to get a place ready for this first soul brought from the world after He had died.
You have heard of the child that did not like to die and go to Heaven, because he did not know anybody there. But the thief had one acquaintance—even the Master of the place. He calls to Gabriel, and says:
“Prepare a chariot; make haste! There is a friend of Mine hanging upon that cross. They are breaking his legs; he soon will be ready to come. Make haste and bring him to Me.”
And the angel in the chariot sweeps down the sky, takes up the soul of the poor penitent thief, and hastens back again to glory; while the gates of the city swing wide open, and the angels shout their welcome to this poor sinner—“washed in the blood of the Lamb.”
And that, my friends, is just what Christ wants to do for every sinner. He wants to save you. That is the business on which He came down from Heaven. That is why He died; and if He gives such great and swift salvation to this poor thief on the cross, surely He will give you the same deliverance, if, like the penitent thief, you will repent, confess and trust in the Savior.
Somebody says that this man “was saved at the eleventh hour.” I do not know about that. Perhaps it was the first hour. It might have been the first hour with him, I think. Perhaps he never knew Christ until he was led out to die beside Him. This may have been the very first time he had ever learned the way of faith in the Son of God.
But how many of you gave your hearts to Christ the very first time He asked them of you? Are you not farther along in the day than even that poor thief?
A little while ago, in one of the mining districts of England, a young man attended one of our meetings, and refused to go from the place till he had found peace in the Savior. The next day he went down into the pit, and the coal fell in upon him; and when they took him out he was broken and mangled, and had only about two or three minutes of life left in him. His friends gathered about him, saw his lips moving, and, bending down their ears to catch his words, this was what they heard him say: “It was a good thing I settled it last night.”
Begin now to confess your sins, and to pray the Lord to remember you when He cometh into His kingdom.