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: