You Can Have Peace
Monday, March 29th, 2010Today, we examine Jesus dying on the cross between two thieves as we explore the peace you can have through Him.
I am a person who wants to have everything wrapped up at the end of the day.
When I was boy, I enjoyed assembling model airplanes and it was always very difficult for me to get halfway through building a F-16 fighter jet and have to leave it undone. I always wanted to finish and if I wasn’t able to then I was frustrated and disturbed.
Fast forward to today, as an adult, I like to finish projects that I begin and not leave anything undone. If there is something left undone in my life at the end of the day, peace eludes me.
Do you struggle with the desire to complete tasks on your job, in your personal life, at school, at home and when you can’t finish them, you struggle?
There is one area of our lives that when we lay our heads on our pillow at the end of the day, we should be able to have peace in, at that is our personal relationship with God.
The Bible gives us a picture in our story today of how two persons experienced a peace that only comes from God. The two persons were Jesus, God’s Son and a thief on a cross.
Here’s the great part of this story we look at today. It describes two men who are totally different, Jesus and the thief, and yet they both experience an unbelievable joy and peace when they experience a relationship with God. The passage is Luke 23:39-46.
In this passage we discover the amazing truth that,
► You Can Experience a Peace That Has Eluded Billions of People Down Through the Ages.
This is the peace that the thief experienced as he hung dying on the cross next to Jesus.
Now the remarkable fact is how can a thief experience any peace?
There was the other unrepentant thief— he was a picture of hardness even in death. This criminal showed enormous hardness of heart. He mocked the very thought that Jesus was the Christ. That is the picture we would have in our mind of how it should be. The thief had committed crimes and now he was paying for his sin. In our minds, that is justice. He doesn’t deserve peace.
But then there’s the second thief.
He was the repentant thief—a picture of true repentance.
He was a person who Experienced a Peace That Has Eluded Billions of People Down Through the Ages. But how?
The second thief demonstrated the steps to salvation and true repentance.
⇒ He feared God (Luke 23:40).
⇒ He declared that Jesus was righteous (Luke 23:41).
⇒ And He asked for Jesus to remember him (Luke 23:42).
Notice that Jesus promised him eternal life; the repentant man was to be with Christ in paradise that very day.
The thief didn’t have time to come down off the cross and study the scriptures to know what Jesus was talking about. He didn’t know about the streets of gold or mansions Jesus was going to prepare or any of the other wonderful joys God has prepared for those who trust in Him.
He only knew that he was a sinner and that he needed a Saviour. He only knew that He was dying and he couldn’t save himself. He only knew that he deserved punishment, Jesus did not.
This thief on the cross and his conversion to Christ shows that no man is beyond hope of redemption in whose soul still lingers SOME fear of God. And as he spoke, faith rose in his soul and he blurted out his appeal, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It was a plea that did not fall on deaf ears. The response was immediate, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The word “Paradise” is a Persian word meaning “a walled garden”. When a Persian king wished to do one of his subjects a very special honour he made him a “companion of the garden” and he was chosen to walk in the royal garden with the king. It was more than immortality that Jesus promised the penitent thief. He promised the honored place of a companion of the garden in the courts of heaven. “You will be with me” said Jesus.
This Word from the Cross teaches some wonderful truths. It illustrates that the way of salvation is wondrously simple. The devil has blinded the eyes of men and women to thinking that it is hard to be saved, difficult to come to Christ and to become a Christian. But this clearly isn’t true. The man was saved simply by asking the Lord to save him.
This Word from the Cross reminds us that the worst sinner may be saved. There can be no doubt that the man was a criminal. He had broken the laws of the land and he was crucified for that reason, but the measure of his sin didn’t alter his chance of being saved one little bit. Let no one despair in thinking they are too bad to be saved, as the hymn writer put it, “the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”
Another important lesson to learn from the personal encounter of the dying thief with Jesus is that,
► Salvation doesn’t depend on religious ceremonies, good deeds or any contribution from you.
There was no time for any of these things to take place. I once read that “salvation is free yet costly; the entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing at all, but it cost God the life of His only Son.”
Don’t you want to have peace today? Don’t you want to experience a calm joy and satisfaction even when all your bills are being paid or all the things in your universe are not in order? Because if you have Jesus then you have all you need to experience a peace that has eluded billions of people down through the ages.
With Jesus I can win over ____________.
(you fill in the blank)
> Health issues
> Bankruptcy
> Divorce
> Making a failing grade in school
> Depression
> Loss of a job
> Lack of finding a job
> Marital troubles
> Parental challenges
In Jesus, we can have peace even when all is falling apart around us. If Jesus could have it and the thief could have it while being nailed to a cross then you can too.
If you are new to bible study and you are still checking things out, let me encourage you to open your heart to what God is trying to say to you today.
Not only can the Peace That Has Eluded Billions of People Down Through The Ages Come to Us in This Life, but,
► We Can Share This Peace With Others.
It is just as important in life how you live as well as how you die. In fact, watch this, how you live will determine how you die.
Jesus knew how to live and He knew how to die.
We should do our part in bringing peace to others by being a person of peace.
In the way we treat others.
The Good Samaritan;
In the way we lead others to faith in God;
A fellow in Alaska has been throwing the Word of God into the ocean for a third of a century. Missionary Everett Bachelder, who, with his wife Mina, operates the Nome Gospel Home in the city, has tossed more than 1,000 mayonnaise jars and ketchup bottles into the Bering Sea – crammed with Scripture messages written in 100 languages. Wind and waves have carried the story of God’s love to the far corners of the earth, bring responses from as far as 10,000 miles away. Kids from the various area churches help him fold the messages and put them in the jars and bottles.
It has been a rewarding experience. One bottle was taken from the Atlantic Ocean a decade after Bachelder tossed it into the icy Bering waters. A man in Singapore, distraught over a romance gone sour, was about to commit suicide by jumping into the waters from a cliff when he saw a bottle wash up against the rocks below. Deciding to leap when the bottle broke, he watched it hit the rocks again and again without breaking. Curious, he climbed down the cliff, saw the messages, opened the bottle, discovered it related to the Word of God, sought out a missionary in Singapore, and got saved! As Ecclesiastes 11:1 says, “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”
(Author: Dr. Robert Sumner; Date: 88/10/01; Source: Biblical Evangelist’ Text: Eccl 11:1)
We throw bottles into the sea everyday; not literal bottles but bottles none the less.