11/24/24 Luke 23:32-43 “Happy New Year!”

21 Nov 11/24/24 Luke 23:32-43 “Happy New Year!”

11/24/24    Luke 23:32-43       “Happy New Year!”

As a society, we like to celebrate special occasions and today is the day of 2 such celebrations.  First of all, this is the last Sunday of the year.  Next Sunday we start Advent, the first Sunday of the new Christian year.  Today we should be blocking off Times Square, having a parade with ticker tape and whatever else we do on the eve of the last day of the year.  Happy New Year’s Eve!  I guess we don’t do that for Jesus but it is a thought.  What we do instead is have Christ the King Sunday.  This works for me as I really think the whole Times Square thing is a little silly.  Christ is a King even if we don’t have much to do with kings in this country.  In some other countries, celebrating the king or queen of the country is quite a big deal.  Here, we just look on these countries with a kind of quiet bewilderment.  The truth is that we really do have a King and He is the King of Kings as I stated last week.  Therefore we have 2 major reasons to be celebrating today.  So the next question is, “How do we celebrate Christ the King Sunday?”  In our text today, we really don’t find much to celebrate because Jesus is being put on the cross to die.  Let’s see if we can sort through all this gloom and find the Good News.

We are a people of misconceptions and here is what I mean.  This comes from Jeff Strite.  This concept drove American policy for a few decades.  We had a generation who thought that if things like poverty, unemployment and racism were overcome, crime would disappear.  Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark once wrote, “Healthy rational people will not injure others.”  In other words, poverty was the cause of crime.  President Jimmy Carter used this same rationale to explain the wide spread looting during the blackout in New York City in 1977.  He said, “Obviously, the #1 contributing factor to crime of all kinds is high unemployment among young people.”   So wonder of wonders, someone decided to do a study and I would guess that we all paid for it somehow but that is a whole other story.  They did a study of the New York riots of 1977 and this is what they found.  45% of the looters had jobs and only 10% of the looters were on the welfare rolls.  They also found that the looters stole things for which they had absolutely no use.  So what drove these people?  Of course this expensive study didn’t tell us that but maybe we can come to a conclusion from our Scripture reading.

I think that we know this story fairly well.  There were 2 common criminals who were executed along with Jesus.  I only use the term common because there was nothing extraordinary about them other than the fact that they must have done something against the rule of Rome in order to get the death sentence.  Matthew tells us that they were robbers but they had to be a bit more than thieves to get the death sentence.  They would have had to have been stealing to support some sort of conspiracy against Rome.  They weren’t necessarily against the Jews and the Temple but only against Rome.

And this is the same with Jesus.  The Romans could have really cared less about what Jesus had been doing.  They didn’t care that He might be starting a new religion or upsetting the applecart of the Jewish religion.  They didn’t like the Jews anyway.  You see the Jews were in charge of keeping their people in line so the Romans didn’t really care what individual Jews did unless it was in some sort of treason against Rome.  So when the Jews announced to Herod that Jesus was claiming to be king of the Jews, then this would be considered to be an act of treason because there was only one ruler or king in Rome and that was Caesar.  That is why Jesus was crucified.

If we look at verse 38 we see that there was a sign placed above Him on the cross which said, “This is the King of the Jews.”  Although this was put up as a mockery to not only to Jesus but also to the Jews in general, it was also a very explicit warning for others not to try to commit this crime.  However, it turns out that this sign is partly true.  Jesus was the King of the Jews and He is also King of all people.  Little did they realize that this really was a king!

So this is Christ the King Sunday, let’s talk about these three people who died a most horrendous death so many years ago.  At first we read in Matthew, that both of these thieves insulted Jesus.  As a matter of record, just about everyone was heaping the insults upon this dying man.  If something like that happened in this country today, the insulters would be penalized for not being sensitive to the situation.  Anyway, the narrative shows us that both of these robbers were really bad guys in the beginning.

I think that this is a really good commentary on the human condition.  We like to think that we are pretty good.  We come to church; we do what is expected of us.  We help people out when they need it.  We are pretty good people.  I am pretty sure we aren’t like those others who don’t even know God, the thieves and robbers.  I mean I could just go on and on here with more blah, blah, blah but you know what I mean.  We are all broken and we know it so I won’t dwell on it.

But what about those other people?  If you think for one minute that there aren’t people in this world, in this area, in this community who make fun of God and Christians, then you are living a very sheltered life.  They are there.  They are here!  As a matter of fact, there are still people who are upset with me for becoming a Christian and they can hardly contain their sharp criticism and disdain for me because of this.  We also see people who cannot abide by what the Bible says so they rewrite it so it is more pleasing to them.  They are the mockers on the cross.  We have corporate thieves who steal from widows and pensioners the money set aside for retirement.  We have husbands who beat on wives because they misread the Bible.  All these people are the ones who are hanging on the cross, making fun of Jesus and the right way of living.  They are dying and help is right beside them.  You can look at just about any page in the newspaper, including the funnies, and you will see this.  There will be many who will not get to paradise with Jesus.

But let’s not get carried away with all of this because one of those thieving rascals changed his mind.  I mean here are these two guys hanging with Jesus, throwing insults at him and suddenly one changes his mind.  I wish someone could tell me what happened because I can’t figure it out.  I have to be careful here before I start to sound like some pastors of this country who don’t even believe in Jesus.  Of course I know what happened here.  Jesus happened to this man.  Everything will change for this man.  His whole life will be changed even though there are only moments left of it.

This could be one of the most important moments in the Bible for us.  This is better than the parable of the workers because this is much more pointed.  This man is not going to escape death.  Death is just moment away and there is no way he can dodge it.  Even in these last few moments of life, there is a chance for him to spend eternity in Paradise with Jesus.  He doesn’t know it but his faith will get him there.

Somehow Jesus overcame this man’s resistance to the truth.  He goes from calling out insults to Jesus to His defender in just minutes.  Have you ever wondered what happened to this hardened criminal to make him change his mind so drastically?  I’m going to give you my theory on this.

This guy got to be right next to Jesus for several hours.  He was in the very presence of God.  When this happens, one of two things will happen.  Either the person will suddenly be very much against God and try to get away any way possible.  The one criminal can’t get away so he keeps on insulting him.  Or the other thing that happens is that a person will accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior even when they aren’t worthy.  That is what happened to the second thief.  He was overcome by the mere presence of Jesus.

This happens to many people even today.  When we find ourselves in the very presence of God, we will do one of the two same things that these two thugs did.  I have seen hundreds of times when people reject God.  Most of the time they don’t insult Him in the way we think of but they won’t hesitate to insult the messenger.  We throw mud at the messengers.  We throw mud at the few TV evangelists who fall victim to sin.  Then we go on to say that all TV evangelists are terrible and blackened by sin.  But this is far from the truth.  Most of them are wonderful Christian people.

If that one doesn’t hit home, how about the people who are skeptical of church because only hypocrites go to church or that the only thing church is interested in is our money.  Therefore, all churches are bad.  The truth is that churches are full of hypocrites and that is the way they should be.  I would guess that we are all hypocrites!  We all need the church to help us bridge the gap to Jesus.  Do churches need money to operate?  Of course we do!  You don’t hear me asking for money over and over again do you?  I sometimes wish we did have some money for things.  I will ask if you are tithing your income as the Bible instructs us.  After all everything we have is from God and we should be able to give back a measly 10%.  However, that is between you and God and not you and the church or me.  I can only say how good this has been for me and my family.  But I get sidetracked.

Anyway, Jesus happened to the second criminal and He didn’t happen for the first guy.  So what about Jesus in this scenario?  In this case and in every case, Jesus is the lynchpin that holds everything together.  He is the King and He is in the middle.  First of all Jesus shows us the love He has for everyone.  He loved all the people in the crowds and those hanging with Him.  He would have accepted anyone that day who accepted Him.  That is who Jesus is.  He is the originator of love.  He is the giver of love.  He is everything about love.  He is the real Dr. of Love.  To show us, He accepts a dead beat criminal into paradise who is insulting him and hanging beside Him.  There are very few of us who would do such a thing.  I praise the Lord that Jesus isn’t like us in this way.  I also praise the Lord that He accepted me and my broken life and I’m sure many of you have experienced this also.  He is love personified.  He has all the power of the universe and it is found in His love.

He is the God of love and the God of forgiveness.  We see that in our reading and we see that in our everyday lives.  All of us here today are a product of the forgiveness of sins by our Lord Jesus Christ.  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  But because of the love He has for you, this perfect love, He will forgive you of all your sins if you just ask and you will then be able to join Him in paradise, just like the one hardened criminal.  This is forgiveness for all sins for all people who let themselves be carried away by the Spirit of God.  The man on the cross with Jesus was forgiven of all sins.

All of this happens and much, much more when Jesus is the King of your life.  Like I first stated, we don’t believe in kings like England or some of the Middle East countries.  We don’t believe in kings like they did in the Bible.  That is because we have the most perfect King of everything.  Human kings are not perfect but Jesus is in all ways, in all times and in all places.  He is there for you when your day goes bad.  He is there for you when you have your darkest moments.  He is there for you no matter what.  We just need to learn to take all things to Him so He will help.  For some of us this is a hard thing to do but the more you practice it, the more it becomes second nature to you.  When Jesus starts to become the first place you look to for help, then things will finally start to come together in all aspects of your life.

Jesus Christ is definitely King of Kings and Christ the King.  This is something that we should all try to remember at all times.  Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson makes this observation.  In a few moments Jesus will use the words, “It is finished.”  This is a victory cry from Jesus because He had completed and accomplished everything that God had sent Him into this world to do.  In this sense, it is like the athlete who enters a marathon race with the single-minded intention of both reaching the finishing line and coming in first. It is like the student finally reaching the goal after years of study and comes to graduation and a degree. It is like the author or artist, who after years of research and struggle finally completes their masterpiece; their most significant and enduring work. It is like undergoing major surgery and recuperating completely.  These words ‘It is finished’ were spoken by the King of kings from His earthly throne, the cross.  Everything to be done is done even if it looks like a tragedy to us.  As Jesus hangs from the throne, He has won the victory over sin, evil and death by willingly and lovingly allowing Himself to submit to these powers.  In doing so, He defeated them, all of them.

All the evil in the world, all the bad things of the world are defeated.  Yes, they will hurt us because we still live in this world.  All we can do is follow Jesus in everything He says and know that there is a place in paradise with Him when this is over.  Jesus is always with us if we want Him.  He will be with us forever into the future and that is a promise.  That is a promise to you from the absolute King of kings on this beautiful Christ the King Sunday.  I thank you Jesus for loving us so much.  Happy New Year!  Let’s pray.